Words matter. These are the best Bestseller Quotes from famous people such as Diana Gabaldon, H. W. Brands, Matthew Lesko, Ashwin Sanghi, Fran Tarkenton, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When’ Voyager’, the third book of the series, hit the ‘New York Times’ bestseller list, they very honorably redesigned the covers and started calling them fiction.
There has always been interest in certain phases and aspects of history – military history is a perennial bestseller, the Civil War, that sort of thing. But I think that there is a lot of interest in historical biography and what’s generally called narrative history: history as story-telling.
I’ve been bragging for over 25 years that my first New York Times bestseller was a book I copied from the U.S. Government Printing Office!
When I wrote ‘The Rozabal Line,’ I had no preconceived notions of what a commercial bestseller should be. I have always viewed ‘The Rozabal Line’ as my first love and probably my best work. The fact, however, is that it is my least read work.
My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels.
The New York Times Bestseller ‘The Amateur,’ written by Ed Klein, former editor of the ‘New York Times Magazine,’ is one of the best books I’ve read.
I never set out to do this – getting to No. 1 in the ‘New York Times’ bestseller list wasn’t even a pipedream.
I don’t write huge books any more. I used to write 1,000 printed pages, but now I write short books. I did one on Napoleon, 50,000 words – enjoyed doing that. He was a baddie. I did one on Churchill, which was a bestseller in New York, I’m glad to say. 50,000 words. He was a goodie.
The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right?
I was never confident about finishing a book, but friends encouraged me. When I finished my first book, it was accepted by a publisher right away and became an instant bestseller. One male critic called it the most shocking book he ever read.
Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.
The bestseller list is the tip of the iceberg.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ appeared to highly favorable reviews and quickly climbed to the top of bestseller lists, where it remained for more than eighty weeks. In 1961, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. A film adaptation was released in 1962, starring Gregory Peck, and received three Academy Awards.
I know the bestseller ‘Gone Girl’ doesn’t need an ounce of support from me, but that book was as sharp and witty as they come.
If you write chick lit, and if you’re a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You’ll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.
‘The Mortal Instruments’ is based on a series of novels by Cassandra Clare; it has been a New York Times bestseller, so it is pretty popular.
We partner with movies that stand for more than the latest bestseller.
Most important of all, there is no right or wrong way to write – there’s only what works for you. I was taught to write every day, but I know a writer (a bestseller at that!) who only writes on weekends.
Modern cookbooks are marketing tools for chefs. They’re in the bestseller lists but no one cooks from them.
The business model – where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable – is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you’re a huge bestseller.
I wrote a tennis book about Chris Evert and her then-husband, John Lloyd. It was called ‘Lloyd on Lloyd’ and became a No 1 bestseller.
Human beings have kicked around the concept of what individual happiness means for centuries, from the Bible to the ancient Greeks to the 1859 bestseller ‘Self-Help.’
Jerry and I hoped that it would be a popular bestseller.
‘Fallen Too Far’ was my first NYT bestseller. That changed my life.
When I was on the bestseller list with the first book, everyone who knows me knows that every week it continued to be on the list was a very dark week for me. Everyone knows that all I wanted was to be off that list.
My first book was called ‘Buried Dreams,’ about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy’s mind.
Peter Breggin, an American psychiatrist, had been criticising SSRIs since the early 1990s. He wrote ‘Talking Back to Prozac’ (1995) to repudiate psychiatrist Peter Kramer’s ‘Listening to Prozac’ (1993) – a bestseller which claimed that Prozac made patients ‘better than well.’
Bookstore operators tell us that the books which head the bestseller list are books on peace and happiness.
When my plans to become a world-famous rockstar didn’t pan out, I decided to try being a lesbian instead, didn’t pull that off either, and wrote my second book, the national bestseller, ‘The Straight Girl’s Guide To Sleeping With Chicks.’
When ‘Catch Me If You Can’ was published back in 1980, I never dreamed that it would become a bestseller, much less a major motion picture and now a big Broadway musical. What’s amazing about the book is that it has never gone out of print.
