The Bestseller Code Quotes

“Back in the spring of 2010, Stieg Larsson’s agent was having a good day.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“They insisted that the pleasure of reading is not necessarily just about providing pleasure to the mind, but to the heart, the emotions, the body and – for those who believe in these things- the soul. The problem is that this kind of appreciation of literature has been shrouded in embarrassment and shame for a long time”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of a Blockbuster Novel

“The second dominant topic in Fifty Shades is not BDSM either. It is something complementary to human closeness. This topic is about intimate conversation, which makes up another 13 percent of the novel, and reflects Ana’s emotional discussions not just with Christian but with her best friend, Kate, her mother, her friend José, and her stepfather. A third important topic in James’s novel, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the topical DNA, is one that centers on nonverbal communication such as smiles, glances, and other facial expressions. We learned that actually, when the novel is machine-read word for word, not one of the three most dominant topics in the novel is about kinky sex. To be sure, sex is there in the topical profile: the fourth, fifth, and sixth most prevalent topics taken together add another 13 percent of the overall ingredients and all of these relate to seduction, sex, and the female body. But clearly there was something else going on, something more subtle and more interesting than the BDSM hype that became the center of so much of the reviews.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“The top differentiating topic is what we have called human closeness, and that closeness can exist in any type of relationship. It turns out that this topic (and not the sex scenes in the “Red Room of Pain”) actually makes up 21 percent of Fifty Shades of Grey. James was therefore writing in a different way from many other authors whose novels are labeled “erotica.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“Still, in the many topics that suggest a realistic world, there are some that are winners and others that are losers. Among the good, the popular, and (for writers) the go-for-its: marriage, death, taxes (yes, really). Also technologies—preferably modern and vaguely threatening technologies—funerals, guns, doctors, work, schools, presidents, newspapers, kids, moms, and the media. By contrast, among the bad and unpopular, we already have sex, drugs, and rock and roll. To that add seduction, making love, the body described in any terms other than in pain or at a crime scene. (These latter two bodily experiences, readers seem to quite enjoy.) No also to cigarettes and alcohol, the gods, big emotions like passionate love and desperate grief, revolutions, wheeling and dealing, existential or philosophical sojourns, dinner parties, playing cards, very dressed up women, and dancing. (Sorry.)5 Firearms and the FBI beat fun and frivolity by a considerable percentage. The reading public prefers to see the stock market described more so than the human face. It likes a laboratory over a church, spirituality over religion, and college more than partying. And, when it comes to that one, big, perennially important question, the readers are clear in their preference for dogs and not cats.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“Characters must have these moments of casual intimacy and closeness, if not explicitly romantic. Be it a shopping date with Mom, a fishing date with Dad, or a cooking date with a new lover, there must be time to date.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“It is more specifically about human closeness and human connection. Scenes that display this most important indicator of bestselling are all about people communicating in moments of shared intimacy, shared chemistry, and shared bonds.”
― Jodie Archer, 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.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“We investigated this a little further, and found an interesting pattern across all our bestselling books, beyond just Steel and Grisham. It turns out that successful authors consistently give that sweet spot of 30 percent to just one or two topics, whereas non-bestselling writers try to squeeze in more ideas. To reach a third of the book, a lesser-selling author uses at least three and often more topics. To get to 40 percent of the average novel, a bestseller uses only four topics. A non-bestseller, on average, uses six. While this may sound like a lot of numbers, the effect on your reading experience and the cohesion of a satisfying narrative is quite significant. Telling the heart of a story with fewer topics implies focus. It implies lack of unneeded subplots. It implies a more organized and precise writerly mind. It implies experience. We tested this finding with two of our friends—an agent and a novelist. Both told us that they had, through a series of painful rejections from publishing houses, come to the theory that new writers start out too ambitious. They said such writers tend to favor the approach of telling a complex situation from all angles, which will entail many topics. Writers are observers, and it is natural for them to want to share all that they have observed about the human condition. While writing such a topic-rich novel can be a very satisfying intellectual endeavor, the market tends to reject it. It’s too much in a 350-page experience. Focus that brings both depth and a story that can be easily followed is the preference—topics in fiction are not meant to amount to an encyclopedia. They serve as the underlying linchpins for character and emotional experience and are meant to overshadow neither.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“We investigated this a little further, and found an interesting pattern across all our bestselling books, beyond just Steel and Grisham. It turns out that successful authors consistently give that sweet spot of 30 percent to just one or two topics, whereas non-bestselling writers try to squeeze in more ideas. To reach a third of the book, a lesser-selling author uses at least three and often more topics. To get to 40 percent of the average novel, a bestseller uses only four topics. A non-bestseller, on average, uses six. While this may sound like a lot of numbers, the effect on your reading experience and the cohesion of a satisfying narrative is quite significant. Telling the heart of a story with fewer topics implies focus. It implies lack of unneeded subplots. It implies a more organized and precise writerly mind. It implies experience. We tested this finding with two of our friends—an agent and a novelist. Both told us that they had, through a series of painful rejections from publishing houses, come to the theory that new writers start out too ambitious. They”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“commentators found the Fifty phenomenon irritating”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“The relationship between theme and experience is easy to describe.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“Think some more about why you read the novels you read.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“There are no similarly important systems of organization for the other aspects of novels that matter to readers—happy endings, tearjerkers, books set in Tokyo, or novels that feature firefighters or princesses or nuns.”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“If you’re a novel reader, you know that there is typically a general fiction section that houses classic and contemporary authors alphabetically, and then the genre writers have their own shelves under headings like Romance and Science”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

“you’re a novel reader, you know that there is typically a general fiction section that houses classic and contemporary authors alphabetically, and then the genre writers have their own shelves under headings like Romance and Science”
― Jodie Archer, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel