How to spot a bestseller?

[Jo Zebedee]

In my experience, such as it was, they want someone they can sell the books of. Yes, a nice author who behaves, has no ego and can write quickly is nice, but sales are king. So long as that happens, all else is secondary. When my agent dropped me it was made very clear I was easy to work with, good humoured and timely. But she couldn't sell what I was writing. That's the bottom line, I'm afraid. What makes money for them.

 

[Jellybooks]

The entire dialogue is very fun to read, but as the person who was interviewed on NPR about reader analytics, let me make a few comments:

All of the books tested were professionally edited, but there can be a whole range of issues why a book does not engage readers:

- cover set the wrong expectations: reader expects to get X, but gets Y; readers realise this pretty quickly, usually they are gone after a few pages in such a situation; sometimes cover designers simply try to be too clever by half, the result: unhappy readers...
- the beginning is slow and long-winded - well readers often do not have the patience...
- plot too complex (or too simple), can't identify with the characters (or characters poorly developed, too many characters), etc. There is a whole range of reasons why readers drop off and what appeals to one audience, may not appeal to another audience...
- wrong language - an older reader may not identify with youth language and vice versa (what makes a YA novel is not the narrative, we find, but the language used!)
- topic, setting, context etc. - an older generation more easily identifies with certain historic events than a younger audience and vice versa, but it's not always predictable...

Above all, there is one common misunderstanding, which is that reader analytics is an editorial tool. It is not. It is primarily a marketing tool. Does a book resonate with an audience and if so what kind of audience? It helps to focus marketing dollars, publicity effort, positioning of the book and much more. If a book does not sell it helps answer the question: was it the content or was it the marketing?

One of our favourites is how some translations really, really work and others don't, something that can be tested very well with reader analytics, but again it is the translation as a whole that is assessed, not how a paragraph or chapter is translated...

 

[Brian G Turner]

there can be a whole range of issues why a book does not engage readers

Very good points, and thanks for sharing them with us. And welcome to the chrons forums.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Interesting- and very reassuring. Thanks.

pH

 

[Keith Taylor]

Very good points, and thanks for sharing them with us. And welcome to the chrons forums.

Agreed, excellent post

 

[Martin Gill]

how is that really any different from the process of the various folks at agencies and publishing houses reading through manuscripts and finding those flaws

Volume would be my guess. No sensible firm bases a decision making process on only one data point or a single source of insight. This doesn't replace an editorial perspective, but it brings an additional data source to help and I imagine they could probably source more beta readers more quickly through a scheme like this than through trad. means. Netflix do similar things with their content development process. eBooks have effectively instrumented the reading experience - so how fascinating to learn how people actually read.

Now, what would be really interesting is to correlate that readership data with other other sources of data - like location, time of day or weather. I wonder what you would learn.

 

[Jellybooks]

Volume would be my guess. No sensible firm bases a decision-making process on only one data point or a single source of insight. This doesn't replace an editorial perspective, but it brings an additional data source to help and I imagine they could probably source more beta readers more quickly through a scheme like this than through trad. means. Netflix do similar things with their content development process. eBooks have effectively instrumented the reading experience - so how fascinating to learn how people actually read.

Now, what would be really interesting is to correlate that readership data with other sources of data - like location, time of day or weather. I wonder what you would learn.

We have learnt very, very little from location

Weather may influence your reading time, but no correlation yet with *what* you are reading. whether you will finish that book or not, so not terribly interesting either

but *time*, time is *Very*interesting

from Netflix we borrowed the concept of "velocity" (a.k.a binge watching) how long does it take you to read a book from start to finish with all the pauses, your need for sleep and the distractions life throws at you - velocity tells you a lot about how strong the pulling power of a book is

is a book primarily read during commuting hours and lunch breaks, in the evening or on weekends, is it2snackY" or is "immersive" time can tell you a lot in that respect

time also tells you what percentage of the audience literally can;t put the book down, i.e. is a quite literally a "page turner" or "un-put-downable"

time also tells you if your audience hs a lot of time (reads any time of the day", busy people (Only an hour of evenings", weekend readers and lot more and base don that you can figure out which books fits which audience better...

so far very few SciFi books have been tested, I guess that's because SciFi books don't get much in marketing budget? They are left to fend for themselves? WE work with Penguin, but not ACE, we work with Macmillan, but not Tor and so on... They have shown little interest...Ditto Baen etc.

Big sigh, because personally, I like to read SciFi (Fantasy is getting tested, but I don't identify with that in the same way, I am more Charlie Stross kind of reader... not too surprising if my profession is reader analytics and technology?)

 

[Martin Gill]

Ah hello Jellybooks. This is interesting to me as a wannabe author but way more interesting professionally. I work for a consumer trends and tech research company as an analyst. A lot of what we've been looking at recently is the concept of customer-led, data-driven organizations and strategies. I'd love to talk. We are always looking for examples of folks doing cool things with new tech.

 

[Jellybooks]

Ah hello Jellybooks. This is interesting to me as a wannabe author but way more interesting professionally. I work for a consumer trends and tech research company as an analyst. A lot of what we've been looking at recently is the concept of customer-led, data-driven organizations and strategies. I'd love to talk. We are always looking for examples of folks doing cool things with new tech.

simply email to {firstname}@jellybooks.com