What Sells Books?

I think it's fair to say that what preoccupies the minds of most book people is the question of which books sell, and why. The rumble around this issue has gotten louder in recent weeks, amid news of and discussion about changing newspaper coverage. As I indicated last week - and as many others have suggested before and since - nobody really knows how much press attention, reviews, off the book page coverage and even advertising influences sales.

So it can be instructive to look at books that get a lot of ink and/or "buzz" and then look at their sales. The New York Times did this a few weeks ago with Leslie Bennett's "The Feminine Mistake", and concluded that the 5,000 or so copies that Nielsen BookScan reported sold was woefully disproportionate to the amount of noise the Voice book had generated. (Never mind that the piece itself generated even more conversation, and that by now, the numbers are up to 8000) That information was probably only surprising to the Times readers who toil outside our beloved business: while 5,000 books is hardly in the blockbuster galaxy, most book people would say it's not bad for an "issue book" that had, at the time, been in stores for only about a week.

Still, partly because they don't quite know what else to do, publicists still seek buzz and ink and "coverage" as part of the let's-throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks publicity philosophy. And sometimes, something does stick. Consider, for example, George Tenet's "At the Center of the Storm", one title that has an impressive buzz-to-sales ratio. The embargoed title was (of course) leaked before its April 30 pub date. and while few formal reviews have been published, there have been countless stories about the book, as well as interviews with Tenet and his supporters and detractors: presto, the book sold a whopping 46,000 in its first week, according to BookScan. Likewise, Michael Chabon's very different title, the novel "The Yiddish Policeman's Union": it has generated reviews (positive to mixed) and profiles of its affable author - not to mention a fancy party at Manhattan's Four Seasons; it has sold an impressive (for fiction) 23,000 in its first week. Whether sales like this will continue once the noise abates remains to be seen, but impressive beginnings are enough to perk up the most down-at-the-mouth publicity department..

But is it the coverage, per se, that made these books hit? One editor I talked to thought otherwise. He suggests that the books (with which he is not professionally involved) have succeeded because a) their authors are brand names (or in the case of Walter Isaacson's "Einstein" - which sold 48,000 in its first week - both the author AND subject are brand name; b) we're approaching summer, and father's day, both of which are prime book-buying seasons; and c) - and this is a shocker -- they just may be useful, informative or good.

Which is not to say that publicists should stop pitching to media outlets, however reduced or changed they may become. Or that the only way to win is to start off with an author or topic that everybody already recognizes. Or that timing doesn't matter.

So go ahead, knock yourself out: come up with all the creative marketing ideas you can manage for all media now or ever to be invented. Look for authors with platforms and well known names pitch every outlet you can find.

Just remember, before all that, that sometimes it helps to start at the beginning: with projects that mean something, that have something to say.

Sara Nelson is Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly: The International Voice for Book Publishing and Bookselling.