Is it ever possible for a writer to be happy with what they’ve achieved? Or do the goalposts keep moving? Today we ask a most un-Christmassy question… is it much harder to succeed when you’re a success?
Hey, Writers! Be Careful What You Wish For
Tag: Bestsellers
We Have The Secret Actress: Now It’s Time For The Secret Author
The Secret Actress is currently writing anonymously for the Guardian newspaper about the stuff nobody will admit publicly in Hollywood. It’s time for The Secret Author to do the same for the writing community. Are you the next online Superhero?
The Next Big Book Trend: That One From Before
What goes around, comes around. Apparently, we are regressing, in terms of fiction, back to the sensationalistic stories of old. People seem surprised by this. I am surprised by people’s surprise. It’s like being taken aback because skirt lengths have changed again. If you didn’t see it coming, you were standing in the tunnel with…
How to Buy a Book
I can hear them now. “That Tara Sparling one. She’s some tulip.” “Come again?” “She tried to tell me how to buy a book. Feckin’ cheek of her. What’s next? How to get up in the morning? How to breathe??” Look – I know it seems simple. But this is more of an inquisitive How…
5 Old Bookselling Rules which No Longer Apply
…and, from the emerging author’s perspective, are they a Woo-Hoo, or a Boo Hoo? 1. Back Catalogues Sell Slowly, Or Not At All Back in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, when a reader stumbled across a new author, their latest book was often the only one available. If the author were really successful, the bookshop might stock…
Bestseller Trends Part I: Women
In which we revisit those bestseller lists, and I wonder if I should have drawn some nice bunny rabbits to make them prettier* Another pattern is evident from the 2012 bestseller list. Of the top 15, there were only 3 men, and one of those was Tolkien, who had already been dead for some time. Despite Lee…
Fiction Genres: what sells?
If we can’t tell who is going to be a bestseller anymore just by the author, can we tell what genre of book or story will be a bestseller? It’s easy to say that a good book will sell itself, but that’s simply not the case. Sometimes a certain genre will become very big very quickly and authors…
Tara Sparling writes 