Lit eZine Vol 8 | p-22 | INSIGHTS | How to Write a Bestseller

ARTICLE

HOW TO WRITE A BESTSELLER
by David McVey

There’s a lesser-known Monty Python sketch that spoofs improving children’s TV like How! and Blue Peter; a jolly, avuncular presenter (played by Graham Chapman) announces that he’s going to show us ‘how to play the flute’. Holding up a typical instrument, he points to the relevant bits of its anatomy and tells us, ‘you blow in here and move your fingers up and down here’.

The task of writing a bestseller is easily described in similar terms; all you have to do is think up an idea for a book, convince publishers they can make a profit from it, then persuade the supermarkets and pile-‘em-high online merchants to stock it and, finally, ensure that members of the public buy it in their tens of thousands. Simple.

There are, of course, other means of guaranteeing a bestseller, but they can be burdensome to arrange. For example, you could become a celebrity, but even that might not be enough on its own. You also need to have a messy divorce, cheat on (or be cheated on by) your partner, be able to convincingly demonstrate an abused childhood, undergo gender re-assignment or manage to win a TV ice-dancing or cookery gameshow. Of course, if you are such a celebrity, you’re hardly going to need the relatively minor wealth that comes with a book deal, but no one said that economics, especially in the book trade, is based on the Sermon on the Mount.

Do writers actually want to write, or at any rate, set out with the intention of writing a bestseller? No doubt some do, akin to the businessman who sets out not to make shoes or retail soft furnishings or distribute refrigerated goods, but whose aims from the very beginning are simply to be a success and make money. Happily, many writers, whether they churn out deeply-felt literary novels or popular genre fiction, put the writing first. Bless them. But, for the moment, let’s keep, ahem, pretending that it’s all about the money.

As writers, we’re often advised to write about what we know. If what you do know is the wildlife in your garden, the league-winning exploits of your local semi-pro football team, how a nearby town coped with the two world wars or the post-colonial history of Zambia, then a readable, worthy non-fiction book (or two) might well emerge; but no volume on these topics will buy you a swimming pool. If, however, you move in different circles from the rest of us and your daily round, what you know, includes hobnobbing with celebrities, or you’re privy to the off-record briefings of politicians, or you served on undercover SAS operations in Helmand or Iraq, then any work based on what you know smells of bestseller. Some authors of this kind sign contracts, are handed advances, and are commissioned to write books that must be bestsellers, or there’s no point to the exercise. 

Yet bestsellers do still happen by accident. The Bible was no calculated production decision targeted at the churchgoing demographic with high-volume distribution through Asda and Tesco. Anne Frank could have had no notion that her diary would sell in truckloads for decades, nor, sadly, that she would neither see nor benefit from its success. And books do, still, lurch into bestsellerdom by, say, appearing on the Booker longlist, without massive hyping first from publishers and agents. But not often. So, really, it’s just as William Goldman wrote about Hollywood; nobody knows anything.

What, then, are the practical steps to becoming the writer of a bestseller? Actually, they’re not really steps, more preconditions. Nothing is guaranteed, because, remember, nobody knows anything.

1 Have a good idea; a ‘good’ idea is one that will convince agents, publishers, booksellers, supermarkets and, ultimately, readers that it’s a winner. In this sense, a hastily-written biography-lite of an actress who has just gone noisily into rehab amidst much paparazzi flash photography is a ‘good’ idea, while the concept of a sweeping post-modern novel that questions the way we look at reality, written in stylish and inventive prose, er, isn’t.

2 Get an agent; you need an industry insider batting on your side. Agents know publishing and publishers – and some publishers now refuse to consider ‘unagented’ (and there’s an adjective so ugly that it should never have been coined) submissions. I’ve slogged on all these years without an agent – none of my ideas have ever gripped one sufficiently to take me on, but I’m not bitter, oh no – so I can’t tell you how to go about getting one. There should be an article in a past Writers and Artists Yearbook about it; go there. Maybe I should, too.

3 Be disciplined; once the juices are flowing, keep going until you are finished. If you can stash away a deal and a hefty advance, the last thing you want is a reputation for not delivering the goods. Especially as one bestseller is likely to lead to another, and the second one won’t need as brilliant an idea because your foot is already in the door.

4 Practice smiling; a bestseller is a high-volume product, like lip gloss or cat food, and it has to be sold. You will meet with publishers and reviewers and booksellers and local TV interviewers, bloggers and vloggers and, even, the public. It’s hard work, it’s not glamorous and at times you will feel like decking any or all of the above. Don’t. Just keep smiling. Practice. Start now.

The first idea I had for a barnstorming bestseller was also the last; a rip-roaring action-chase thriller set in the Highlands, John Buchan for the 1980s. The hero was pursued over rocky ridges in moonlight, involved in car chases on narrow mountain roads and even (I was chuffed with this bit) menaced in a kamikaze-style attack by a radio-controlled model aeroplane. The Moriartyesque baddie controlled politicians and companies and union leaders (remember them?) from a remote shooting lodge, but Our Hero got hold of a wad of computer printouts with all of the information needed to Bring Him Down. As I revised, these printouts became a floppy disk, whose size reduced from 5” to 3.5” and then it became a CD-ROM. No doubt in later revisions it would have morphed into a USB stick and then streamed data, had I not given up after it became clear that 1) it was a really rubbish idea, and no one would ever want to read it, and 2) all agents and publishers I contacted agreed with 1).

I’ve never had a bestseller, never had a book of my own published. Even as I’ve been writing them, all of my attempts at novels have sub-divided themselves, like science fiction creatures, into smaller entities – short stories. Many of my short stories, articles and chapters have appeared in multi-author books, but for the most part my work finds a home in literary journals, newspapers and magazines. Magazine publishing is not what it was, yet there are some that still sell astonishing amounts, and not all of those that do focus on sleb goss. I regularly had pieces published in a Scottish interest magazine that sells around 40,000 copies a month and has a worldwide readership, based on Scottish exiles and their descendants. Most copies of the magazine are shared around and read by several people. Its sales figures, then, reach bestseller numbers; the words of the contributors are read by a readership most novelists and biographers can only dream of. Of course, the money for each article is insulting to piffling. Yet, over the course, I’ve earned more money from writing than some published novelists will ever do. Result!

So magazines are a kind of bestseller too. In the current economic climate, though, I don’t need any more competition, so I hope that all other writers will stick to writing books.