Towards a bestseller

We all want one – publishers, writers and even readers. For readers it’s confirmation that the work’s likely to be good.  For publishers and writers it means more money and greater justification of their existence. It also becomes a pressure point. Bloomsbury can never be the same again after Harry Potter.

But how does one get there? Many books are just as good if not better than the ones that become bestsellers. What makes the difference?

Visibility

It is largely a question of being seen. This can be harder for small presses and for newcomers and for the new imprint that becomes well-known in a short space of time there is another pressure point. Follow that. As they have less experience than the more established houses there is only one way to go now and they’re likely to go that way – down.

Slow steady process

More often than not it’s quite a hard slog. It’s also a bit of a waiting game, too. We must persistently look for the best script, turn it into a book and give that book the best airing we can with the resources and time available.

Taken by surprise

Yes, it happens when you’re not looking. A few weeks ago we and our writers were suddenly in demand. When we asked how we had been found, our clients told us they had simply googled “authors who do visits” and for some reason we’d appeared on the first page of search results.

Faith and belief

We hadn’t expected or even hoped for this. We’d predicted a trickle from our marketing and publicity efforts and were realistic that this was all we could expect from our current position. We had faith, however, that we were doing the right thing and a belief that it was justified and would eventually lead to greater success.  

The ultimate act of faith is believing that all of our books deserve to be bestsellers.