The Bestseller Code
March 19th, 2022
I work at a library. I saw this book come across the circulation desk when it came out a few years ago. I instantly dismissed it. “Number crunchers. Techies. What do they know about writing!?!” I did this without even looking at it. Smug? Yes. Very smug.
It came across the desk again a few months back. It was a slow day at the library. I opened it to the first page thinking As soon as I come across a sentence that’s bullshit, I’ll toss it into the cart. Well, I ended up finishing the first chapter without finding such a sentence. In fact, by the end of the chapter I was all in. What the authors (Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers) said made perfect sense to me. One is an experienced editor (Archer), the other is a professor of English with a specialty in computer textual analysis (Jockers).
Together, they set out to find if there were any pattern to bestselling books. They wondered if there is any hidden structure or under the radar, non-obvious elements of a book that help make it a bestseller. Long story short, there sure is.
The two go into detail about the process they followed to discover these elements and how they apply to both historical and current bestselling books and authors. It is a quick, fascinating and very non-number crunchy read. They do a great job of explaining their process and their algorithms. I urge any author to read it.
I loved the book so much I told my coworkers (all bookish people) about it. One of them said, “Huh, I wonder if anyone has done anything with that? Like turned that into a service.”
It turns out, someone has. That’s the story of the next post.