The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

What the godparents are teaching us about bestselling is that there must be a dominant topic to give the glue to a novel, and that topics in the next highest proportions should suggest a direct conflict that might be quite threatening.

Until authors find the right solution and place for this dark girl figure, we predict she will keep turning up on the bestseller lists.

But “The” remains the most successful way to begin a title because it is a word that implies agency focused somewhere, be that focus on a place, on an event, on an object, or somewhere else. The title gives us a clue about how to relate to the story that follows.

The authors are known for their signature topic, and fans expect them to deliver it. If that trademark gets a third of the book, the book-per-year writer then has two-thirds of his or her space to introduce the tangential topics that make each new book seem a little different. This formula can go on forever, and we will see how cleverly this is don

The bestselling novel is a world in which characters know, control, and display their agency. Their verbs are clean and self-assured. Characters in bestsellers more often grab and do, think and ask, look and hold. They more often love. These characters have some self-awareness and self-knowledge. They own themselves, even when they don’t necessaril

characters, to be thought of as successful, must be so unique, so complex, and so well rendered inside and out that the reader can know them in a way they will never know their real friends or even themselves. In other words, a character in a novel should be psychologically deep and real.

Consider romance alongside thrillers. These are two centrally important categories for any researcher of the contemporary book world because they are the two most lucrative genres. They rule the market, albeit different areas of the market. Thrillers still seem to have more power when it comes to the New York Times list. This is especially true in

Writers, don’t take your reader further than you personally have ever been, and if you have been further than most of us, then keep it for your memoir.

One thing that is immediately clear about all three of these classic writers is that their first sentences create voice. Note everything about them—the length, the punctuation, the relative simplicity. Someone is talking to us, and that someone sounds authentic, in command of some sort of authority. There is no wavering, or cautiousness, or lack of