Is Your Stuff Bestseller Material?

Here’s an easy way to find out if your writing is bestseller material. Pop over to The Bestseller Code and pop in some of your work and click on the closest genre and see what happens.

Using math it’ll figure out if your sentence structures lend your work to bestsellerdom. The opening of Caviar and Lemon Drops gets a 20/20, however when things start hitting the fan later in the story and my sentences get shorter, I hit 8.3/20. So there you go. Take what you will from this thing, but it’s fun to play with!

Repeating Yourself… Repeating Yourself

I just finished the very talented Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes and certain elements of it reminded me of her book The Pact. And that got me thinking: As a writer, how do you not repeat yourself?

2007

1998

By this, I mean, how do you ensure that you don’t use the same phrase or comparison or even the same word or situation or character trait over again? How do you catch yourself? (For me, critique partners are McAwesomely Awesome at helping me see this sort of thing.) But after you have written a bazillion stories, how do you catch yourself–particularly stories that have been edited eight hundred times and you no longer can recall what actually stayed in the story and what went into the ‘reuse if possible’ pile?

The reason I bring this up is that in these two Picoult books when she flashes back to the moms being expectant, they both took long walks, right up to their due dates, and in both books the husbands make cracks about the wife giving birth out on her walk. As well, I noticed the use of a strange and rare word in a comparison twice (dang if I can recall it now though!) in Nineteen Minutes. This is something I know I do sometimes. Reusing a strange and wonderful word is so easy to do. You generally don’t think about that kind of thing as you are writing along. Also, I found that in both books the female teen characters both end up pregnant, and both feel less than perfect, but both put on the perfect facade in hopes that nobody will notice that they don’t quite fit and aren’t quite real.

Picoult has published 18 bestselling novels which is no small feat. So how do you keep it fresh in each story? How do you not fall into your own little groove? And can you? Is some repetition to be expected? I really don’t know, but it’s something I’m thinking about this week. That is, when I’m not changing killer poppy diapers.

What’s Next After a Bestseller?

Now that is a good question. Say you are an author and you just released a HUGE hit. How do you follow up on that? Think Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveller’s Wife). Think JK Rowling (Harry Potter series). Think Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love).

Pressure. My god, yes.

Expectations. Oh man, yes.

Criticism. Undoubtedly.

While I can dream about how difficult it must be to write a follow up with all that expectation hanging over you and your keyboard, Elizabeth Gilbert stands up and talks about it in this TED Talk (she says people act like she’s doomed–yikes!):

New York Times Bestseller List

Awhile back I stopped reading agent blogs. I do still check in here and there and follow links recommended by others. But for the most part, I have a general knowledge of the more popular topics like ‘use of dialogue’ and ‘what not to include in a query letter.’ My thirst for writing knowledge has become a little deeper, or if you will, advanced.

AQ Crew (the owner of AgentQuery.com), unbeknownst to them, issued a challenge. And that is to start paying closer attention to world of publishing. They suggested that us writers who want to slide a foot in the door start checking out more than agent blogs. (Get a real handle on the business.) We should be checking out editor blogs, publishing blogs, certain newspapers, certain publications regarding publishing, the New York Times Bestseller list, etc. It’s an idea I like. I was feeling stumped. Like I had stalled out in my learning, but wasn’t sure where the door was to take me to the next level. Voila.

<Sigh> Not that kind of challenge. Although a Pepsi and a bag of Doritos would really hit the spot right about now…

And sure, I know ereaders are big (and getting bigger, better, and cheaper by the moment) and a lot of authors are publishing directly to ebooks here and there. But really, could I predict the next trend? Maybe not. I can see the end of YA (I mean, that market has got to get flooded at some point too, right? Especially since everyone is deciding to represent it).

Recently I decided to leave chick lit writing behind. It is a totally fun genre, and one I really enjoyed getting to know, but the fact of the matter is, it is a flooded market. My rejections were rarely about my writing, but about the market. Now that I have passed the newbie mark in terms of novel writing, I am moving on to different genres and working with more business sense. That’s not to say I’m not still going to have a blast when I write. It’s saying that if I want a shot at this publishing thing, I have to think like this is a business. Because it is.

So, today I am starting by looking at the New York Times Bestsellers list. And not just reading it, but studying it. Why are these books on there? Why are some of these books still on there?

To tell you the truth, I feared checking out the list as I was sure it would be all books I hadn’t heard of. Wrong! I even have a couple on my ereader (okay, they are on my husband’s and only on my ‘to be read’ list–once I get around to downloading them to my reader). Anyway, I am realizing that maybe I’m not quite as in the dark as I first thought. (The depth of this statement has yet to be determined.)

Here is a link to the list: http://www.nytimes.c…oks/bestseller/

And here are some of my thoughts:

“The Girl…” books by Stieg Larsson. Why? Is it the bright cover art? I’d say about half of those who read it over on AgentQuery Connect gave it a thumbs down. As in slogging through backstory, wondering why the main character doesn’t appear until page 25. That kind of thing. I tried reading one of the books. Really tried. But I couldn’t. Curious about this one. It isn’t the writing, so there must be an element of ‘je ne sais quoi’ about it.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Is this one inching up the list again due to her newest release?

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m guessing the movie release of this one is helping keep this one at the top of the list.

Okay, so looking at the list has only brought up more questions for me… but they are good questions I think. (I hope.)

How about you… any thoughts on the list?

Hack or Literary God?

Nathan Bransford had an interesting blog post the other day. Here’s the question that he presented to his readership:

“You go down to the crossroads and make a pact to have your novel and future novels published. You are given a conditional choice. Either you can receive the highest literary acclaim for your work, but a guarantee that you will never earn enough to give up your day job. Or you can always be considered a terrible hack, but make bucketloads of cash.Which do you choose?”

Personally, I fell into the majority and chose money. I don’t need to write the best flowery, deep, moving and meaningful stuff available to the masses to be happy. In fact, writing like that would undoubtedly make me somewhat unhappy. For one thing, imagine the pressure and tight critiques you would get. Ouch. Every time you opened your mouth you’d be afraid of using the wrong word or that you wouldn’t sound as brilliant and literary as you were made out to be by the press. Imagine the heyday when you stumbled over a word! I’d have to become a recluse.

On the money side, you get the chance to reach a lot of people (assuming you’re making money from your immense writing popularity and not your naked photos posted on the Internet). By reaching a wide audience, you are given the opportunity to provide people with hours of entertainment and enjoyment. Nice. Sure, there will people who say, ‘It’s only Jean Oram. It’s not celebral. It’s light. You don’t have to think.’ So what? I’d be in good company with writers like Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Meg Cabot. They don’t have day jobs to support their writing. And they reach a lot of people and give people a lot of enjoyment. For me, that is what writing is about. Connecting. And I am not saying that beautiful, deep, literary writing doesn’t connect. It does. And it resounds deeply when it does. But it doesn’t get the chance and opportunity to connect with as many people and is subject to intense criticism.

So, here I sit with 66% of Nathan’s commenters, leaving my ego at the door: Show me the money.