What is a Bestseller?
The first thing most people see when they hear the word bestseller are dollar signs. In order to make the bestseller list a novel must sell over 100,000 copies. The cream of the crop sell millions. What makes these books so popular? What gives them mass appeal? Every aspiring writer wants their book to be a bestseller but what forces are at play here? For the last decade, writers and would-be writers have been struggling with demystifying the bestseller.
OTHER THAN RAKING IN BIG BUCKS, WHAT MAKES A BESTSELLER?
Have you ever picked up a book that you couldn't put down? Have you ever stayed up all night just to read one more chapter... one more chapter... one more chapter? These are the novels we take into the bathtub with us, spill coffee on, devour voraciously on the bus ride to work and on the train ride home because we can't stop reading long enough to do our everyday tasks. Have you ever borrowed a book from the library that you didn't want to give back? Like millions of readers worldwide, chances are you're hooked on a bestseller. Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Danielle Steel, Patricia Cornwell, Tom Clancy are a few household names. All you have to do is check out their web sites to see how popular they are among readers and how many books each has published. Exuberant fans have created hundreds of web sites on their behalf.
Bestselling novels span the entire range of genres from horror to romance to science fiction to mystery to thriller. Stephen King is known as the master of horror; Michael Crichton brought science fiction to the masses; Danielle Steel is the reigning queen of romance; Patricia Cornwell is the original mistress of forensic mystery; and if it wasn't for Tom Clancy we wouldn't have the "techno-thriller."
Perhaps the term "bestseller" first came into common use in the 1960's and 70's when authors Jacqueline Susann and Sidney Sheldon broke new ground in popular literature with their novels, "Valley of the Dolls" and "The Naked Face." But the bestselling phenomenon isn't restricted to the last sixty years. Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" could well be considered the very first bestseller. Published in 1936, it was not only made into a blockbuster movie, but to this date, the book has never been out of print.
What do these authors have in common other than the fact that their books sell in the millions? None of these authors necessarily fit only one genre. Is "Gone With The Wind" a romance, an adventure, or a historical novel? Stephen King's tales of the macabre often cross over into social drama and the supernatural. "Carrie", for instance, is the tale of a high school girl with telekinetic powers, who teaches her peers a bloody and mortal lesson for bullying and ostracizing her. Science fiction writers might deny Michael Crichton a place among the SF greats because his books have the feel of thrillers. Overriding the moralizing in "Jurassic Park" - what happens when science runs amok? - we are given a thrilling roller coaster ride to a satisfying conclusion where everyone, except the good guys, gets eaten by dinosaurs.
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