BEST BEST BEST
That's the Goal, Right?
Hi Friends,
It’s BEST OF list time! (CONGRATULATIONS ALIX HARROW!) (AND A FEW OTHER PEOPLE I CAN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT RIGHT NOW) We’ve got like six more weeks of BEST! OF! LISTS! Best of the year! Best of the Decade!!!!
Lists are great, tbh. Even better when you or your clients are on then, obvs, but lists are good because they shine a light on books and people read those lists and maybe they buy some books for themselves, or as presents, or for their libraries, or whatever. It’s getting harder to sell books so books need all the publicity they can get. Love them or hate them, the lists are net good.
Are the lists perfect? No. Are they subject to the vagaries and prejudices of those who create them, algorithms, society? Of course. These lists do not represent THE INDISPUTABLE BEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN because one (or a dozen) lists can’t speak for all readers. I hate plenty of books other people love. And vice versa. So do you. Don’t whine about how imperfect the lists are. Be thankful we’re talking about books and not some needless reboot or whatever. (IHMO.)
Did you see that other Publisher’s Weekly article a few weeks ago about how top heavy publishing is? About how publishers are only looking for THE VERY BIGGEST BESTEST BOOKS that are guaranteed to be best sellers? I’m sorry. I know this is depressing. I promise I have a point.
These lists, those publishers “only” looking for best sellers represent like 2% of the market for books. That 2% generates a lot of income for publishers and writers. (Don’t forget publishing is a business!) We need these lists and those best sellers to fuel publishing. And while the trickle down economics of best seller publishing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, what we’re talking about/arguing about are the books people see the most and buy the most. I have a hard time arguing that anyone should not buy any book. Like any book. Buy The Fountainhead if you’re so inclined. Buy the book by the dingbat’s dingbat son, I guess. (Ok, maybe not that.) But buy a book. Take a book out of a library. If someone reads one book, there’s a decent chance they’ll read another.
And don’t forget: Publishing is not a meritocracy.
Maybe you’re in the middle of a draft and you have no idea if it’s going to be any good and then you see all this stuff this time of year and you’re like I have no chance, do I? There are hundreds of thousands of books published every year. There are a couple hundred books, total, on all the best of lists combined. The math is not good.
The math is not good if your only goal is to get on a list. Best seller, best of, whatever. I mean, yes, I want all my books to get on lists. But if they don’t they are not failures. If they were published for goodness sake—is that not one kind of success? They crossed so may hurdles! They were conceived! Written! Edited! Edited again and again! The writer got an agent! A deal! An editor! A cover! Bookstores stocked it! Some people bought it! Some people reviewed it! Took pictures of it with cute coffee mugs on Instagram!
All these things are successes. All together or just some of them—all these things matter. You should keep going through whatever slog you’re going through right now because it matters. Matters is a big thing. Lists are small.
We are all probably not going to be best sellers or on lists. The overwhelming majority of books are not. Don’t forget that. If you got on a list or whatever, it is another in a long line of successes. Fuck yeah. If you did not, don’t forget all the other ways you have succeeded.
Quick shout out to Manjula Martin’s TinyLetter Martinesque. Her last installment had some insightful takeaways about something I have definitely said online, that events don’t sell books. Her’s did. Buy FRUIT TREES FOR EVERY GARDEN, by Orin Martin, with Manjula Martin, for everyone you love.
Keep writing.
OXOXO,
Kate