Everyone Wants a Best Seller
Every best seller is guaranteed to turn a writer into a celebrity overnight. Not to mention bigger revenue for book sellers and publishers. But what is it that makes a book into a best seller? Is it the title? Is it about luck, marketing, or timing? Or is it a well-designed cover? Many people think that publishing a best seller needs a brilliant manuscript, a dynamic agent, and a competitive publishing company. Often times, producing a best seller is considered a well-prepared concoction of publishing success. Good decisions should be made and the right people should be hired. Although there are no guaranteed tips to publishing a best seller, observing who makes it to the best sellers' list every year could be helpful in cracking the code to printing that elusive best selling book.
Best Sellers' Lists
To realize the change in the reading taste of readers every year, it would not hurt to check and compare some of the books that have made it to the best sellers' lists during the previous years. In Publisher Weekly's 2003 Best Sellers' List, Dan Brown's The Da VInci Code has topped the list of hardbound books in fiction. Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven"; John Grisham's "The King of Torts"; another one of Grisham's books, "Bleachers"; and Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's "Armageddon" also made it in the top five.
Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" proved that the controversy behind it has attracted more fiction readers because it again topped the 2004 Best Sellers' List. Mitch Albom's book also retained its position last year, while other books written by John Grisham still made it on the list. In the 2005 Best Sellers' List, John Grisham's "The Broker" stole the top spot from Dan Brown's book and authors like James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, and Patricia Cornwell also got into the top five. Mitch Albom's book made it to number one in the 2006 Best Sellers' List, while James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks managed to remain in the top five. Michael Crichton's "Next" and Thomas Harris' "Hannibal Rising" were also in the top five best sellers.
There are so many best sellers' lists that it can be impossible to find out the pattern of how the audience's reading patterns change, so most writers simply rely on their own guidelines in coming up with their own best sellers. Some writers decide on their target readers, while others write about topics according to their expertise. There are also writers who are hands-on when it comes to editing, packaging, and selling their books, while others hire editors, artists, and publicists to deal with such matters.
All writers, whether published or not, have their own writing styles and marketing strategies. They may also differ in how they choose their topics and in how they make their titles, but they do have one thing in common. They know that it takes more than skill and confidence to master their craft and that they all have equal chances of having their books in the 2007 Best Sellers' list.