What Makes A Bestseller? - Jonny Geller (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Jonny Geller’s talk titled “What Makes A Bestseller?” at TEDxOxford 2016 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello. What makes a bestseller? So here’s a picture of 50 of some of the top-selling novels of the last few years. The question is, why these and not 50 others? What made these so special?

Were they better written? Did they have stronger covers? Were they just lucky? These are some of the questions that have obsessed me as a literary agent for more than 20 years.

The Reader’s Role

There’s one thing that connects all these books, and that’s you. You, the reader. You went out and bought these books and enthused about them and raved about them. You made these books bestsellers.

The Social Aspect of Reading

And there’s one thing that unites everyone in this theatre, and that is that feeling you get when you’ve read a great book that the first thing you want to do is to tell someone about it, to share your discovery. Because reading is fundamentally a social act, even though we do it on our own. What better feeling is there than when you’ve read a great book and you’ve recommended it to someone, and they come back to you and they say, “Wow, thank you. That book changed my life”?

It makes you feel good, doesn’t it? In fact, reading does make us feel better. Scientists have proved that reading leads to better mental well-being. It even delays the onset of dementia.

The Impact of Reading

Reading makes us better. But also, reading makes us better people. Two social scientists in America called Emmanuel Castano and David Kumar Kidd recently did tests into the link between the reading of literary fiction and better theory of mind.

In other words, the more we read, the more empathy we show to our fellow human beings.

Reading makes us better people. So why did we pick these books above all the others? And by the way, there are many others to choose from. In the UK alone last year, 184,000 new books were published.

The Publishing Landscape

Double that number in China, and about 300,000 in America. There are a lot of stories out there. So how do we find them?

And why does some rise to the top so quickly? Well, it all starts with the author, the book, and someone like me, a literary agent. And I’ll receive a manuscript of about 300 pages or so on my desk.

The Literary Agent’s Perspective

And really at that point, all that it is is words on paper. There’s no commercial intrinsic value in it until I can find a publisher to tempt them to invest their resources to promote it so that you go out and buy it. Now, as a reader, you look for a story that takes you on a journey from somewhere you haven’t been to a place you know not where.

But as a literary agent, I’m looking for something slightly different. I’m looking for a story that takes you on a journey, but from somewhere familiar, on a bridge to somewhere new. Now, that may surprise you.

The Challenge of Original Fiction

You may think, hang on a minute, what’s he talking about? I only read original fiction. What’s the point of reading something familiar? But it doesn’t really work like that.

Because publishers find original material very difficult to market. By its nature, it changes everything from what’s preceded it. It’s hard to compare anything to.

To quote Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” publishers, they can’t handle the original. No publisher went out and looked for “Ulysses” or “Finnegan’s Wake” or “Lolita.” These books, they just happen. And the best thing a publisher can do is just not get in its way.

The Five Essential Components

So what does a literary agent look for to get a book on that chart? Well, I’ve divided it into five essential components. And the first I’ve already hinted at, which is this idea of the bridge from somewhere familiar to somewhere new-ish.

And this really just allows us shorthand in the business to talk about books in a way that we can say it’s this meets this. So they will be able to hedge their bets with a bookseller and put it in a category. So if I went back to our chart and I had a thriller, and I went to the publisher and I said, “This thriller is ‘Gone Girl’ meets ‘Da Vinci Code,'” well, you’d know immediately that that is a psychological thriller with probably a strong female lead, but probably has a conspiracy at its heart.

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If I was to take a novel and say it was a cross between “Life of Pi” meets “The Kite Runner,” well, you’d know it was a fable or a survival story of some kind, but set in a conflict zone, possibly the Middle East. If I was to take a children’s book and say it was a cross between “Winnie the Pooh” and “Fifty Shades of Grey,” that probably would be wrong. But you get my meaning.

The Importance of Voice

So once we have this hook, we then look for something very important, which is the voice. Now, everyone in this room has a voice unique to themselves. We all use our voices in different ways, have different emphases, different intonation.

Now, if you can translate your own unique voice onto the page, then you’re a writer. But it’s difficult. If you can write a novel that only you could have written at that time in that way, then you might get your novel on that chart.

The Craft of Writing

But the voice is nothing without the next component, which is just craft, because writing is hard work. It’s a skill. It’s a muscle that needs exercising.

And to be honest, authors find it very difficult. They write draft after draft. I have one author who I represent who’s known to do between 15 and 17 drafts after he’s submitted to the publisher.

But there are many ways that you can perfect your craft. You can join a writing group. You can enlist on a creative writing course.

You can even get tips on the internet. In fact, there are some very good ones. There’s a couple that I’ve always used, which I’ll share with you now.

Writing Tips

One is something that John Le Carre once said when he was talking about story. He said, “The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the dog’s mat. Now that’s the beginning of a story.” And there’s another tip.

This is, I think, one of the best descriptions of how prose works that I’ve ever seen. So I wanted to share that with you. I’m going to read it with you, but please read along.

The Rhythm of Writing

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine, but several together are monotonous. Listen to what is happening.

The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record.

The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music.

Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony.

I use short sentences, and I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I’m certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals, sounds that say, listen to this. It is important.

Resonance in Writing

It’s very good. Now, the next thing I look for is deeper and slightly beyond the plot and the bridge and the hook. This is what I call resonance.

This is how does a book resonate with as many people as possible and as many readers as quickly as possible. Now, a lot of this depends on the zeitgeist, what’s going on in the world at that time, and it’s difficult to predict. But publishers often take a pump, and agents, and they gamble what they think people will be interested in.

Finding Resonance

I remember Barbara Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond movie franchise, once said that she looks out into the world and asks, “What are we afraid of?” And then tries to find the physical embodiment of that fear in the Bond villain. But there are other things that we look for that have deeper resonance.

Examples of Resonant Books

So if I went back to my chart, and I took a few novels to show you a couple of examples, for example, “Room,” which has just been made into a fabulous movie. Now, that was a very successful novel, not just because the hook of the story was strong, it was about a mother and child entrapped in a cellar trying to escape, but because on a deeper level, it resonated with people because it was about parental love in its purest form.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife,” a hugely popular novel of a few years ago, with a great hook, a love story doomed because one of the characters in it is a time traveler. Why did that work? Because it was about absence in a relationship, particularly male absence, and that resonated with a lot of people.

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“One Day” by David Nichols, massively popular novel and a big movie, brilliant hook, a romance set over 20 years on the same day. Why did that work to such a level? Because it was about missed opportunities, and we can all relate to that.

The Space Between Sentences

Now, the final element that I look for is perhaps the most mysterious and might be the most difficult to explain, but I think you’ll get this if you enjoy reading, and that is we look for the space between the sentences, the gap that an author leaves in order for us, the reader, to inhabit, and we do this with our imagination, our experience, our feelings, and the better the book, the more this space will allow us in. It’s another way of looking at it.

Howard Jacobson recently made a documentary about the making of “The Merchant of Venice” into a novel, which he’s recently published, and I thought it was interesting what one of the Shakespearean experts that he discussed this problematic play with said. Stephen Greenblatt said, “There is no question that ‘Merchant of Venice’ is an anti-Semitic play. Nonetheless…” And he didn’t finish the sentence because he didn’t need to, because what we look for in every story is the nonetheless.

The Core of the Story

Now, sometimes writers themselves don’t know they’ve stumbled on a story that might hit on that chart, which may seem a bit odd because they spent a long time writing 300 pages, but I’ve often sat in my office with young writers and said to them, “What’s your story about?” And they said, “Well, it’s about love and death and marriage and redemption and betrayal,” and you go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what’s the story about? Can you complete the sentence? This is the story about a man or a woman who…”

And they’ll be stumped because it’s very difficult. To reduce a complex story to one sentence is hard, but I believe it is absolutely crucial. If a book is to become a big best-selling book, you have to be able to communicate the core idea easily.

Simplifying Classic Narratives

Not all narratives lend themselves to that, but I do believe that every great classical narrative can be reduced to a sentence. So, for example, “Hamlet,” it’s about a man who cannot make up his mind whether to avenge his father’s murder. It’s about a little more than that, but that’s what’s driving it through to the end of the fifth act.

“Macbeth,” about a man whose ambition proves his own downfall. “King Lear,” about a foolish king who picks the wrong daughters, and so on and so forth. But ultimately, what I’m talking about is discovery, how you as a reader and me as a literary agent discover stories, and we do this by immersing ourselves into them.

The Process of Discovery

We give of ourselves. We have to be open and free and generous, uncluttered. We have to take a risk with these stories.

Now, discovery isn’t always instantaneous. As a literary agent, I know that I can take on a writer, and it may be their fifth or sixth novel that gets on that chart. A few years ago, I had one author who had a problematic second novel.

The Challenges of Writing

Not uncommon. It’s called Second Album Syndrome. You spend your life writing your first novel, and then suddenly you’re given a deadline and you have to write a second.

We sadly agreed to put this novel aside, even though she’d done all this work. And then I said to her at the end of the meeting, “Have you got any other ideas, any other stories?” And she said, “Well, there’s this picture in my house. It’s a print of a painting, and I sometimes look at it and wonder, what’s the story of the young woman in that painting?”

The Birth of a Bestseller

And I thought that sounded like a nice idea. Why don’t you write that? And this was the picture.

And six months later, Tracy Chevalier delivered “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” and that book went on to sell six million copies and was made into a movie. Now, did I discover that book? No.

But I discovered the author, and together we found a way to discover the right story to get on that chart. Finally, the way we discover books is because of publishers. They put a cover on, a blurb, even the title they manipulate, all to try and get us to buy the book.

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The Role of Publishers

And sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. Here’s an example of where I think they got it right. This is George Orwell’s “1984.” I think it’s a very brave cover by Penguin.

Here’s an iconic cover, “Jurassic Park,” Michael Crichton does what it says on the tin, love it. And sometimes they get it wrong. I have no idea what the designer was thinking of when they came up with this.

Publishing Mishaps

And to be honest, the next one puzzles me even more, because until this point, I didn’t know Sylvia Plath was chick lit. But to be fair to these publishers, they get it right as many times as they get it wrong. And I can be sent the perfect manuscript, and it ticks all the boxes, and I send it to the right editor, and we put the perfect cover on it with the perfect blurb, and the booksellers rave about it and put it in the front of their stores, and the reviewers love it, and it doesn’t sell a copy.

The Unpredictability of Success

Why? Well, to quote William Goldman, the famous screenwriter, “Nobody knows anything.” Somewhere along the line, we made a lot of tiny errors. Maybe that cover that looked so good in my office when it was in the bookshop next to all those other very colorful covers just disappeared.

Perhaps the title was wrong. Maybe the blurb was misleading. Maybe we should have gone back and edited that ending again.

Who knows? But all these tiny reasons why a perfectly good book doesn’t get on that chart. So have I answered the question, what makes a bestseller?

Conclusion

Well, if I really knew that answer, I’d be sipping a martini on a yacht somewhere and waving to you from that big screen. But what I hope that we have discovered together is that it’s us that makes these bestsellers. We allow them to happen.

We create as well. The reader and reading is a creative act. And really, ultimately, all that matters is that the next book you buy might just change your life.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Jonny Geller, a seasoned literary agent, explores the enigma of bestsellers in his insightful talk. He begins by emphasizing the crucial role readers play in creating bestsellers through their purchases and recommendations, highlighting the social nature of reading despite its solitary practice.

Geller outlines five essential components he looks for in potential bestsellers. First, he seeks a “bridge” from the familiar to the new, allowing publishers to categorize and market books effectively. Second, he values a unique authorial voice that translates well to the page. Third, he emphasizes the importance of craft, acknowledging the hard work and multiple drafts often required. Fourth, he looks for resonance – how a book connects with readers and reflects current zeitgeist. Finally, he considers the space between sentences, where readers can engage their imagination and experiences.

The agent discusses the challenges of marketing truly original material, noting that publishers often prefer books that can be easily compared to existing works. He shares practical writing tips and stresses the importance of varying sentence length to create rhythm in prose.

Geller illustrates his points with examples from successful novels like “Room,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” and “One Day,” explaining how each resonated with readers on a deeper level. He also recounts the story behind Tracy Chevalier’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” demonstrating how a simple idea can evolve into a bestseller.

The talk touches on the role of publishers in a book’s success, including cover design and marketing strategies. Geller admits that despite best efforts, predicting bestsellers remains challenging, quoting screenwriter William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”

In conclusion, Geller suggests that while there’s no definitive formula for a bestseller, the power of reading lies in its ability to change lives and foster empathy. He underscores that readers themselves are the ultimate creators of bestsellers, emphasizing the transformative potential of every book we choose to read.

What Makes A Bestseller? – Jonny Geller (Transcript)