What does a bookshop do which nobody else can? And what has it got to do with why my bad memory can make even the hardiest, most optimistic author’s heart sink, and whether or not my family ever read this blog?
In this post back in the wilds of 2013, I explored (with the aid of some lovely data. And maybe some pretty shoddy guesswork, it has to be said) how many books an author has to sell in the English-speaking world to achieve bestseller status. In most countries, a bestseller is defined only by what…
…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…
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 