FLS Book Reviews
Book reviews from The Free Lance-Star.
What does it take?
Writer unlocks mystery of best-sellers
By Kurt Rabin
The Free Lance-Star
IT TOOK AN Edgar-Award-winning mystery writer to finally unlock the secret of turning a book, any book, into a best-seller.
Even publishers have never understood exactly why a particular book rockets to the top of the charts, including the 12—from “Gone With the Wind” to “The Godfather” to “The Da Vinci Code”—that James Hall selects for his insightful “Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the 20th Century’s Biggest Bestsellers.”
About the only thing that guarantees an author a best-seller is having the surname “Grisham.” Short of that, a blurb from Stephen King can work wonders, as can giving the words “Chicken” and “Soup” prominent placement on a book’s cover.
But nothing works so well as “generating controversy,” one of the 12 features that Hall’s best-sellers all have in common, along with things like “colossal characters doing magnificent things on a sweeping stage” and having a hero who is a rebel, loner or maverick.
Of course, Hall is quick to credit the book-selling acumen and influence of former TV host Oprah Winfrey, whose book club was able to turn dusty backlist titles from such dinosaurs as Dickens, Faulkner and Garcia–Marquez into born-again best-sellers.
Or, best-case scenario, have Oprah trash you, as she did James Frey and his “memoir” of drug abuse, “A Million Little Pieces.”
Ah, Oprah and controversy, there’s the magic elixir!
Kurt Rabin is a copy editor for The Free Lance–Star.
IT TOOK AN Edgar-Award-winning mystery writer to finally unlock the secret of turning a book, any book, into a best-seller.
Even publishers have never understood exactly why a particular book rockets to the top of the charts, including the 12—from “Gone With the Wind” to “The Godfather” to “The Da Vinci Code”—that James Hall selects for his insightful “Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the 20th Century’s Biggest Bestsellers.”
About the only thing that guarantees an author a best-seller is having the surname “Grisham.” Short of that, a blurb from Stephen King can work wonders, as can giving the words “Chicken” and “Soup” prominent placement on a book’s cover.
But nothing works so well as “generating controversy,” one of the 12 features that Hall’s best-sellers all have in common, along with things like “colossal characters doing magnificent things on a sweeping stage” and having a hero who is a rebel, loner or maverick.
Of course, Hall is quick to credit the book-selling acumen and influence of former TV host Oprah Winfrey, whose book club was able to turn dusty backlist titles from such dinosaurs as Dickens, Faulkner and Garcia–Marquez into born-again best-sellers.
Or, best-case scenario, have Oprah trash you, as she did James Frey and his “memoir” of drug abuse, “A Million Little Pieces.”
Ah, Oprah and controversy, there’s the magic elixir!
Kurt Rabin is a copy editor for The Free Lance–Star.
HIT LIT: CRACKING THE CODE OF THE 20TH CENTURY’S BIGGEST BESTSELLERS
by James W. Hall
(Random House, $16, 336 pp.)
Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/books/2012/09/17/what-does-it-take/
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