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What is a "Good" Book?

17K views 191 replies 47 participants last post by  gilesxbecker 
#1 ·
The oft-touted piece of advice for selling lots of books is to "write a good book" but that advice can be so subjective and rather vague as to be almost useless.

For what is a "good" book?

Sometimes the answer is that it's not necessarily a well-written book but one that tells a "good story" which is another bit of advice that can trap us in the same near meaningless loop once more since that too can be subjective and vague.

What is a "good" story?

It's often suggested to read the topselling books in your genre to get an idea of reader expectations. I sometimes find this counterproductive. There are some books that rank highly, maintain that rank (or close to it) over time, and have decent numbers of positive reviews that I have purchased in order to study them and better understand reader expectations only to come to the conclusion that readers must expect to find mediocre writing, to notice an apparent lack of a hook to pull the reader into the story and to be bored out of their freaking minds before reaching chapter two.

Yet those books sell and continue to sell in spite of the fact that they are so, so boring or even just plain awful.

So I am left to wonder if it's just me. Are those books not bad? Am I too easily bored? Have I become too picky to read modern books?

To me, a good book should draw you into the story. You can see it playing out in your head as you read along. Each page compels you to turn to the next. Each chapter becomes the second to last chapter you want to read before putting the book down. Eat? Just one more chapter first! Drink? You can refill your glass later. Mother Nature's calling? Well, there is that empty glass . . . The bottom line is that you cannot put the book down.

That's a good book. That's the kind of book you want to emulate.

There is often debate over show vs. tell but I wonder if the real debate should be over push vs. pull. Perhaps we need to ask of each paragraph we write if it is compelling the reader to keep going or giving them an out to put the book down. It's not whether you are showing or telling but whether each line of your story is pulling the reader in or pushing them away.

What do you think makes for a "good" book? What specific advice would you give to a first time writer who wants to write a "good" book? Is it too subjective to define or are there specific and universal elements that make up a "good" book? How can you pull the reader in rather than push them away?
 
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#102 ·
Laran Mithras said:
She was force-pushed. Oprah shows: "have you read Fifty Shades yet?" "What everyone is talking about!" Advertising to put multi-billion dollar companies to shame. It's an age-old sales trick: sell the sizzle.

The customer begins to think, "I better buy that so I'm not left out."

That's how you sell a crappy book into a bestseller. Indie authors don't have that avenue.
Exactly. Few people want to acknowledge the importance of social factors in creating bestsellers and bestselling authors. There's little to learn from them because there's little to differentiate them from writers who aren't bestsellers.
 
#104 ·
P.J. Post said:
The reality, to me, is that FSOG is an amazing book, even if it falls short on the literary side of things. Advertising and massive distribution did not account for the phenomenon, not by a long shot. The popularity came first. There's a lot more going on under the surface; it connected with people fiercely, especially the target demographic, just like Twilight did. To dismiss either as poorly written books that simply benefited from advertising is to miss the lessons these books have to teach. And, to be fair, that's the toughest aspect of reading for research - what is the lesson here? In this case, from a product design perspective, I'm going to contribute the success to super vulnerable honesty and an almost conspiratorial "dear diary" voice. However, the product wasn't released into a vacuum. Not only was the audience massive, but it was experiencing social change, a shift in agency was taking place throughout the demographic, regardless of age, education, employment, race or nationality. I think some predisposition to gossip and subversion played a role, as well.

Indie authors do have the ability to be honest and to write compelling prose, remember that FSOG did not begin life as a novel - it was fan fiction. But a FSOG phenomenon is always going to be rare by its nature. Change comes slowly. The last time I can think of this happening over a novel was in 1956 with Peyton Place.
From passages I've read, I think FSOG is pretty damn awful, but there's no denying that it connected with a lot of people for reasons beyond Oprah pushing it. As PJ correctly pointed out, when FSOG was just Twilight fanfic, it was still massively popular. She then rewrote it as an original work and published it online before self-publishing it as an ebook. And its continued popularity is what led to traditional publishers to come calling.
 
#105 ·
It's a mistake to chalk up too much of 50 Shades' success to things like Oprah. Yeah, that didn't hurt, but it was always going to do well. It broke out before the media made an issue of it. And yes, she had followers from fandom that helped make it a success, but those people were fans because she wrote a story they wanted. Sure, it was fanfic, but a lot of people read fanfic because it's the only place they can find the types of stories they want. You want to know what the next hot trends are going to be? Watch fanfic. God, BDSM has been a thing in fanfic for decades, and it really ramped up over the last decade. Readers were ready.

The evidence that readers were simply ready for books like this is how many books with similar themes and heat levels sold buckets afterward, and how many people launched six-and-seven-figure careers writing similar stuff. If there weren't readers clamoring for those stories, that wouldn't never have happened.

She hit a vein, and good for her.

It's pretty clear evidence that the emotions the reader experiences, the things the story makes them feel, are king. Skillful prose, pacing, good dialogue, all sorts of things writers think are most important are somewhere down the list. If you're good at those things, it's a lot easier to make your readers feel, but it's absolutely no guarantee that they will. You can write a million carefully crafted words and still not tell a satisfying story. She wrote a couple hundred thousand pedestrian words that, IMO, needed serious editing, and told a story 'good" enough that it propped up an entire genre.

(50 Shades was never self-published after the Twilight was scrubbed off. A lot of people think that, but it was a small Australian publisher who did fanficcy things, as I recall.)
 
#106 ·
P.J. Post said:
The reality, to me, is that FSOG is an amazing book, even if it falls short on the literary side of things. Advertising and massive distribution did not account for the phenomenon, not by a long shot. The popularity came first. There's a lot more going on under the surface; it connected with people fiercely, especially the target demographic, just like Twilight did.
...
Indie authors do have the ability to be honest and to write compelling prose, remember that FSOG did not begin life as a novel - it was fan fiction. But a FSOG phenomenon is always going to be rare by its nature. Change comes slowly. The last time I can think of this happening over a novel was in 1956 with Peyton Place.
FSOG is one of the worst books I've read, ever. The writing is far below the quality of Twilight, and compared to both Twilight and FSOG anything by Dan Brown is of near Shakespearian quality. These books are defective in everything except the romance and the romance itself is regressive, conservative and right-wing despite the smut these books superficially contain. It, the romance, hit the concurrent zeitgeist 100%, and the book came with an inbuilt fanbase. Add the "it" factor WHDean and others described and you have that sort of bestseller. That also explains why it is hard to reproduce at will.

If you believe that the last time this happened was in the 1950s you need to look more closely at bestsellers. In the USA people like Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Suzanne regularly produced similar bestsellers. Robbins and Collins even refined this to a near-formula, which only became unglued with the general advent of colour television and finally the internet. James profited from the internet quite directly. All that doesn't mean FSOG is a good book.

WHDean said:
4. Sturgeon's Law applies collectively and individually to how-to-write-a-bestseller books: 90% of all these books are crap, and 90% of the okay books are crap.
This.
 
#109 ·
Nic said:
FSOG is one of the worst books I've read, ever. The writing is far below the quality of Twilight, and compared to both Twilight and FSOG anything by Dan Brown is of near Shakespearian quality. These books are defective in everything except the romance and the romance itself is regressive, conservative and right-wing despite the smut these books superficially contain. It, the romance, hit the concurrent zeitgeist 100%, and the book came with an inbuilt fanbase. Add the "it" factor WHDean and others described and you have that sort of bestseller. That also explains why it is hard to reproduce at will.

If you believe that the last time this happened was in the 1950s you need to look more closely at bestsellers. In the USA people like Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Suzanne regularly produced similar bestsellers. Robbins and Collins even refined this to a near-formula, which only became unglued with the general advent of colour television and finally the internet. James profited from the internet quite directly. All that doesn't mean FSOG is a good book.

This.
This is the problem I see with trying to define "good". It's a matter of taste and in matters of taste, there is no debate.

You can tell readers who loved Fifty Shades that it's crap -- regressive, conservative and right wing, etc. but that doesn't matter to them. I can tell consumers of chicken nuggets that factory farmed chickens are treated inhumanely and are unhealthy, that chicken nuggets are pink slime and that they will develop heart disease if they eat a steady diet of chicken nuggets and fries all their lives but -- they don't care. They know what they like and they will or won't buy it if they want chicken nuggets. Until their tastes change, chicken nuggets will rule the fast food menus.

Fifty Shades may be crap in terms of writing. There may be many reasons to criticize it. What none of us can deny is this: Fifty Shades spoke to something in millions of readers who loved it. There were millions who only mildly liked it. There were millions who hated it and hate-bought it just to see for themselves how bad it was. Thousands hate-reviewed it.

That happens with wildly successful books, movies or songs.

What is the lesson of Fifty Shades for the rest of us?

Quit concerning yourself with the merits of successful books. The only thing that matters when a book is successful is that a whole whack-load of people bought it. That's one measure of commercial success. If you want commercial success, you have to write books that a whole whack-load of people want to buy. PERIOD.

You won't know you've done that until you try.

If you don't care about commercial success, or if you care more about "quality" then do your utmost best to write what you consider to be a "good" book and put it out there. Do the best you can and see where it goes.

This is a market. Market forces, not some objective sense of "good" or "quality," rules and determines what is purchased.

The sooner people accept that reality and govern themselves accordingly, be clear about what matters to them, the happier they will be.
 
#110 ·
sela said:
This is the problem I see with trying to define "good". It's a matter of taste and in matters of taste, there is no debate.

You can tell readers who loved Fifty Shades that it's crap -- regressive, conservative and right wing, etc. but that doesn't matter to them. I can tell consumers of chicken nuggets that factory farmed chickens are treated inhumanely and are unhealthy, that chicken nuggets are pink slime and that they will develop heart disease if they eat a steady diet of chicken nuggets and fries all their lives but -- they don't care. They know what they like and they will or won't buy it if they want chicken nuggets. Until their tastes change, chicken nuggets will rule the fast food menus.

Fifty Shades may be crap in terms of writing. There may be many reasons to criticize it. What none of us can deny is this: Fifty Shades spoke to something in millions of readers who loved it. There were millions who only mildly liked it. There were millions who hated it and hate-bought it just to see for themselves how bad it was. Thousands hate-reviewed it.

That happens with wildly successful books, movies or songs.

What is the lesson of Fifty Shades for the rest of us?

Quit concerning yourself with the merits of successful books. The only thing that matters when a book is successful is that a whole whack-load of people bought it. That's one measure of commercial success. If you want commercial success, you have to write books that a whole whack-load of people want to buy. PERIOD.

You won't know you've done that until you try.

If you don't care about commercial success, or if you care more about "quality" then do your utmost best to write what you consider to be a "good" book and put it out there. Do the best you can and see where it goes.

This is a market. Market forces, not some objective sense of "good" or "quality," rules and determines what is purchased.

The sooner people accept that reality and govern themselves accordingly, be clear about what matters to them, the happier they will be.
All this. Ever since I was a kid, people have never shied away from telling me that the superhero comics I've always loved to read are terrible, infantile, they devalue storytelling, etc. I still hear those same arguments today, over twenty years later. Know how many of those people I've listened to?

Not. A. Damn. One. I still read superhero comics, and I read a lot of them. And I love it.

You can keep talking about how awful books like FSOG are. But you're not going to change anyone's mind and the book is still going to sell better than yours, so might as well just let it lie and focus on writing your own books and reading books you enjoy.
 
#111 ·
What Sela and Perry said


Why continue bashing FSOG? It is what it is, a mega huge success which entertained a lot of people.

Many of the fans who love it say the writing is not that good but the story is so entertaining it kept people up all night reading it. Some readers could not wait to recommend it to their girlfriends. I have work colleagues who hardly read books anymore, who are now reading again.
I have Goodreads 'friends' who went crazy over it. Many of the fans interviewed have said that they had not read a book in a while and FSOG has got them reading again. Many of them have gone on to buy books similar to FSOG. Don't you think those authors who wrote similar books are happy that FSOG had that much influence.

I can admit that the writing is not that good but I read the ebooks and listened to the audiobooks. There is something about it that is so alluring. No it's not the BDSM (as the media like to focus on). It just held my attention and I enjoyed it.

E.L. James did her job, she wrote an entertaining book that entertained millions of readers.
 
#113 ·
My Dog's Servant said:
(But to muddy the waters, I'll say I like slow starters, too....if I'm in the mood for them. Many readers don't want to spend the time to get into a book that doesn't set the challenge, right at the start.)
That's fine too, for example: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Barely scratches the surface, but it does a good job of setting the tone for all 800-odd pages of Anna Karenina.

The Lord of the Rings is half again as long, and essentially a thriller, but Tolkien barely gets us started on the actual quest in the first third. The Fellowship of the Ring starts with a prolonged examination of hobbit birthday observances. We know there's more to this thing, an epic struggle of good versus evil, because he's already set the stage with his epigraph about "One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

And secretly, hobbits are the entire point of the trilogy. We're tricked by all of the pageantry of Gondor, the mysticism of the elves, the menace of the Two Towers, but it really, truly, is "largely concerned with Hobbits."

WHDean said:
Reviewers can probably tell you about quality issues (e.g., typos, formatting), but they're a poor source of high-level criticism about writing because all they can tell you is what they think the problems are.
Of course, but that's the most important feedback to get from a layman. They're going to read our books, so we gotta ask whether the books work for them. Yes, or no? If the answer is no, then experts--writers and editors--should be the ones providing the fixes. That's why we make the big bucks.

Doglover said:
I don't think anyone would accuse Fifty Shades of being a good book. It has 5,000 odd reviews on Amazon.com alone declaring how very badly written it is and that is why I resent it so much. Were it well written, I would wish it and James all the best, but to know that good writers can get nowhere while someone with no skill whatsoever can do so well, is heartbreaking.
P.J.'s right: FSOG is a great book.

I'm sorry, but marketing isn't that good at putting lipstick on a pig. Not to the tune of a runaway, world-beating book and a Hollywood franchise. And like Shelley said, I don't see Oprah pushing many unknown, indy fanfics. It was successful before it became a phenomenon.

It's a mistake to allow legitimate concerns about the craft fool you into thinking that the book has no redeeming qualities. It does. You can find commonalities between Pride and Prejudice and Fifty Shades of Grey if you set aside your feelings and dig into the work.

Even if you do think that marketing sold the book, we study that too. Learn from the marketing if you can't see any merits in the writing. Ask why it was possible to position the book so successfully. Sooner or later, you're going to have to ask why people keep reading the thing after buzz and disapprobation get it into their hands.

We only make it harder on ourselves when we take this stuff personally, or become so blinded by snobbery that we can't pick out lessons. Every success can teach us something. Heartbreak is a useless, self-pitying takeaway.

BellaJames said:
Many of the fans who love it say the writing is not that good but the story is so entertaining it kept people up all night reading it. Some readers could not wait to recommend it to their girlfriends. I have work colleagues who hardly read books anymore, who are now reading again.

I have Goodreads 'friends' who went crazy over it. Many of the fans interviewed have said that they had not read a book in a while and FSOG has got them reading again. Many of them have gone on to buy books similar to FSOG. Don't you think those authors who wrote similar books are happy that FSOG had that much influence.
Yeah, man. This speaks to me.

We should all be happy when a book inspires people to read.
 
#115 ·
Trying to figure out what makes a good book is as pointless as trying to figure out what makes a good marriage. Often couples who appear to have the perfect marriage end up getting divorced, and couples who don't fit any ideal of the perfect couple stay together because they have that certain something going for them that defies explanation.

Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition.
Bell Hooks
Writer and critic


Change 'love' to 'write good books' and that says it all :)
 
#116 ·
GeneDoucette said:
I've decided it's a Law of the Internet that all conversations about writing, if they go on long enough, will bring up FSOG. It's inescapable.
There it is: Doucette's Law.

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:
Trying to figure out what makes a good book is as pointless as trying to figure out what makes a good marriage.
Like sela said, that's only true if we're talking about taste. If we settle on objective criteria, like the commercial success of FSOG, then we're in business. And doing business. As business people. Which is what we are, at least in part.

I don't care about consensus on taste. I care about a consensus of craft techniques shared by successful works. I think those exist, and we can learn by studying them.
 
#117 ·
Everyone loves to bash Fifty Shades of Grey. It's so easy and I suppose satisfying to those who aren't nearly as successful.

Fifty Shades was a huge success and it was organic. It became an even bigger success once it moved from a small indie publisher from Australia to a trad publisher but it was already a huge hit from word of mouth and from the fandom world of fan fiction.

It also got a lot of people reading and writing who didn't read or write. It created a whole audience for erotic romance that was much smaller than before it came out. I am a published author largely because of Fifty Shades of Grey because I figured that if a fan fiction author could make it that big, I could give it a try and if I had only 10% of James's success, I'd be able to quit my day job. Guess what? I did and I did quit my day job.

I thought the writing could have been better, but the story was compelling if you like that kind of story and the pace was brisk. It kept me turning pages until it was done and I read all three books in a week.

If you didn't like it, fine. There are a lot of books I hate that are at the top of the charts. Most books I buy are DNF. Only a few keep my interest. That's the way it is for most people.

If an author is upset that their books are not selling, trashing EL James or Fifty Shades may feel good but it won't do anything to help their books sell.

They have to write stuff that people want to read and get them visible if they want their books to sell.

Most people just can't do it. They can put one sentence after another and put enough of them together to make a novel, but the story just doesn't resonate with readers and / or the author doesn't know how to present the book and promote it so that it's visible and can sell.

That's the plain truth.



 
#119 ·
Dolphin said:
There it is: Doucette's Law.

Like sela said, that's only true if we're talking about taste. If we settle on objective criteria, like the commercial success of FSOG, then we're in business. And doing business. As business people. Which is what we are, at least in part.

I don't care about consensus on taste. I care about a consensus of craft techniques shared by successful works. I think those exist, and we can learn by studying them.
This.

Taste is subjective and the notion of "good" an "quality" fiction are also subjective and impossible to determine in any objective manner.

What isn't subjective is sales data. What is less subjective is craft techniques such as a hooky premise, compelling plot and interesting character and blistering (or fast) pace and smart marketing, such as cover design and blurb hookiness.

Those things we can study. Those things we can try. Instead of talking about what makes a "good" book, we should talk about what makes a book a commercial success. What are the aspects that are in common among commercially successful books and authors? How can we take that knowledge and use it for our own careers?

Sure, if people want to debate what makes a book "good," there are places for that. Like Goodreads.

I'm sure there are thousands upon thousands of books with "good" writing and deep themes that are not selling at all. I don't want to write those kinds of books, frankly.

I want to write the kind that people actually want to read. :) Because I want to write books for a living. I count myself blessed to be able to do so and I have to acknowledge that Fifty Shades was a big part of me being able to do so.
 
#120 ·
P.J. Post said:
Is that what the data is suggesting? And what is this "sizzle"? I mean specifically; what exactly were they selling? A book? An experience? Inclusion? Maybe...

The reality, to me, is that FSOG is an amazing book, even if it falls short on the literary side of things.
"Selling the Sizzle" is a hard-sales term. http://simplesmallbiz.com/business-marketing-101-sell-the-sizzle-not-the-steak/

Thing is, it works. Forget FSOG. Let's look at Justin Bieber school products (or any fad product). Fads are created. Long before Bieber became a national household word, department stores had Bieber posters, t-shirts, backpacks and hats. Parents were clueless, but this was being pushed as a fad before it was (as any other fad). "Oh, I better buy this for my kid so they fit in at school. Bieber must be really popular."

Sales pile in as people buy the sizzle so as not to be left out.

Back to FSOG. Yes, it had a tremendous fanfiction following. Good for it. But how do they translate that beyond the fanfic base? They push the "sizzle." "Have YOU read this yet? and Why not?" "Everyone is talking about it!" "What you need to know before you read FSOG." These are all powerful psychological sales tactics.

Then you trot in the testimonials. "I read it and wow!" "I finally bought this and sure wish I'd bought it earlier!" <--- I see that all the time. But who says that? Isn't the fact I bought one good enough? Books, movies, cars, furniture, doesn't matter.

Fact is FSOG was pushed. Would it have been a great mega-seller without it? It wasn't just Oprah, either. Every morning show on TV had an FSOG episode. When was the last time any book got that?

It might have been a bestseller on its own just from the fanfic buyers. But a household byword? Thing is, this strategy always works - on any product. Good for EL James that she had the backing to take advantage of it.
 
#121 ·
sela said:
Everyone loves to bash Fifty Shades of Grey. It's so easy and I suppose satisfying to those who aren't nearly as successful.

If an author is upset that their books are not selling, trashing EL James or Fifty Shades may feel good but it won't do anything to help their books sell.

They have to write stuff that people want to read and get them visible if they want their books to sell.
We were talking about marketing when FSOG came up. Which is what I addressed. Not everything critical of FSOG has to be envy. ::)

When we talk about boxed sets cramming the top lists, is it envy? Or is it discussing the shady marketing strategies that are allowed by Amazon.
 
#122 ·
Laran Mithras said:
"Selling the Sizzle" is a hard-sales term. http://simplesmallbiz.com/business-marketing-101-sell-the-sizzle-not-the-steak/

Back to FSOG. Yes, it had a tremendous fanfiction following. Good for it. But how do they translate that beyond the fanfic base? They push the "sizzle." "Have YOU read this yet? and Why not?" "Everyone is talking about it!" "What you need to know before you read FSOG." These are all powerful psychological sales tactics.

Then you trot in the testimonials. "I read it and wow!" "I finally bought this and sure wish I'd bought it earlier!" <--- I see that all the time. But who says that? Isn't the fact I bought one good enough? Books, movies, cars, furniture, doesn't matter.

Fact is FSOG was pushed. Would it have been a great mega-seller without it? It wasn't just Oprah, either. Every morning show on TV had an FSOG episode. When was the last time any book got that?

It might have been a bestseller on its own just from the fanfic buyers. But a household byword? Thing is, this strategy always works - on any product. Good for EL James that she had the backing to take advantage of it.
I was under the assumption -- possibly wrong -- that Fifty Shades was successful BEFORE the book deal. Agents and editors and publishers usually only invest seven figures on proven successes. So Fifty Shades was already successful. So successful that Writer's Coffee Shop couldn't keep up with demand for the print book. Fifty Shades was not created out of any marketing plan by the trad pubs. They saw $$$ and then invested more $$$ to make it a $100M success vs. a $10M success.

They took it from hugely successful -- considering its origins -- to outlandishly successful.

The huge success was due to the book itself, not the marketing.

If you want to understand Fifty Shades success story, you have to look at the book itself and its audience. If you only look at the prose, you miss the whole story.

Which is the story. The pace. The hook.

But don't take my word for it. You can read the book which shows how Fifty Shades mirrors the plot of other huge bestselling blockbusters.

https://www.amazon.com/Bestseller-Code-Anatomy-Blockbuster-Novel-ebook/dp/B01B1MWKIU
 
#123 ·
Laran Mithras said:
"Selling the Sizzle" is a hard-sales term. http://simplesmallbiz.com/business-marketing-101-sell-the-sizzle-not-the-steak/

Thing is, it works. Forget FSOG. Let's look at Justin Bieber school products (or any fad product). Fads are created. Long before Bieber became a national household word, department stores had Bieber posters, t-shirts, backpacks and hats. Parents were clueless, but this was being pushed as a fad before it was (as any other fad). "Oh, I better buy this for my kid so they fit in at school. Bieber must be really popular."

Sales pile in as people buy the sizzle so as not to be left out.

Back to FSOG. Yes, it had a tremendous fanfiction following. Good for it. But how do they translate that beyond the fanfic base? They push the "sizzle." "Have YOU read this yet? and Why not?" "Everyone is talking about it!" "What you need to know before you read FSOG." These are all powerful psychological sales tactics.

Then you trot in the testimonials. "I read it and wow!" "I finally bought this and sure wish I'd bought it earlier!" <--- I see that all the time. But who says that? Isn't the fact I bought one good enough? Books, movies, cars, furniture, doesn't matter.

Fact is FSOG was pushed. Would it have been a great mega-seller without it? It wasn't just Oprah, either. Every morning show on TV had an FSOG episode. When was the last time any book got that?

It might have been a bestseller on its own just from the fanfic buyers. But a household byword? Thing is, this strategy always works - on any product. Good for EL James that she had the backing to take advantage of it.
That pushing came after it started resonating with an audience. The morning talk shows and Oprah didn't just pick FSOG out of a hat--if they did, we'd see a lot more worldwide phenomenons with books. Nor was it engineered--no US national morning show is going to devote a segment to a book published by a small press in Australia that no one's ever heard of unless they have a reason to.

They picked up on it because it was resonating with audiences.

Pushing alone won't work. Just look at Batman v Superman. Two of the most popular and longest-running fictional characters in American history, appearing together onscreen for the first time ever, with a massive marketing campaign. And yeah, it had a strong opening weekend. But what happened that second weekend? It dropped like a rock. Because no amount of pushing could make up for the fact that it was a depressing, nihilistic film with truly awful storytelling. And once the people who saw it started talking about that with their friends, other people decided, "eh, I think I'll wait until it comes to Redbox or Netflix."

Pushing works for a limited, short-term push. But to sustain that level of popularity, you need something that will resonate with audiences and make them want to keep talking about it.
 
#124 ·
Laran Mithras said:
We were talking about marketing when FSOG came up. Which is what I addressed. Not everything critical of FSOG has to be envy. ::)

When we talk about boxed sets cramming the top lists, is it envy? Or is it discussing the shady marketing strategies that are allowed by Amazon.
Equating Fifty Shades's success to the whole boxed set scam is like comparing apples and octopi.
 
#126 ·
Laran Mithras said:
It might have been a bestseller on its own just from the fanfic buyers. But a household byword? Thing is, this strategy always works - on any product. Good for EL James that she had the backing to take advantage of it.
But she didn't. She was a nobody with a stupid fanfic. Except it wasn't a stupid fanfic. No, it was a wildly successful fanfic that delighted readers. And then it a wildly successful, indy-published book that delighted even more readers. And then--only then--did James win the backing of Hollywood and the postmodern Madison Avenue types.

If you think marketing always works, ask around. KBoards has some stories to tell about failed ad spends. The phenomena that you're talking about, the Justin Biebers and the E.L. Jameses, are things that most people had never heard of when they were toiling in obscurity. We only saw their marketing after they had already succeeded. Arguing that marketing is always successful because it made crap like Bieber and FSOG successful is nothing but a tautology.

Lorri Moulton said:
If you get past the sex/sizzle parts of the story, it's a fairytale in a lot of ways. And that will always have an appeal! Look at the way the series ends. Grey changes a lot to please this unassuming girl that manages to capture a gorgeous, billionaire's heart. Much like a young woman might end up with a charming price. Same thing was done in Pretty Woman, too. :)
Exactly! Or Austen! Or any number of others. There's lessons to be learned here.
 
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