Lessons from a #1 NYT Bestseller, New DHM Logo, and One Wild Interview
Step into the perception box, Dear Head of Mine
Front Matter: New DHM Logo
Although Dear Head of Mine is entirely free, some generous readers have subscribed and chipped in funds as a show of support. In this case, that support has translated to better aesthetics—so thank you to all paying subscribers. As much as my fourth grade Canva mockup was, to me, a thing of beauty, here is the new logo, which is inarguably much better:
“Biggest” News in Books: Lessons from a Bestseller
There and Back Again
This week Bonnie Garmus’ breakaway hit novel Lessons in Chemistry is #1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for the 9th time, and it also marks the 41st week it’s been on the list in total. The Seattle Times did a great write up two weeks ago of Garmus and her publishing story, a few pieces of which are remarkable: Lessons in Chemistry is her publishing debut, but it is actually the second-and-a-half book she wrote (including a 700-page first novel); she submitted her first full novel to nearly 100 agents and was unsuccessful in securing representation; the agent she eventually did sign with sold Lessons in Chemistry at auction for north of a million dollars, an astonishing sum for an unknown, first-time novelist with no major connections in media (I think I’m allowed to presume this given that she was rejected by two NFL rosters worth of agents); and she is a number #1 bestselling author and a “debut” author at the age of 65. A few weeks ago, we covered how the young genius narrative has been routinely used in publishing, historically, as a marketing and publicity strategy. There’s no such thing going on here. And Garmus isn’t the only debut novelist over 60 to achieve this in recent memory—Delia Owens was 69 when Where the Crawdads Sing (on the paperback bestseller list this week, marking the book’s 99th week on the list) was published.
There is a persistent undercurrent of concern about gatekeeping in the book publishing industry—who gets a book deal and why. But this article is a stark reminder of what a crapshoot and sometimes a not-very-consciously-barrier-setting industry that book publishing is. It is even revealed in the article that Garmus’ agent told her it wasn’t even a guarantee the novel would sell even after she took the project on. My experience leads me to believe that this was not just the agent trying to manage expectations and play it cool. There are many stories of very famous, bestselling books, represented by high profile agents, that failed to sell altogether on their first go around, or that were rejected by twenty or thirty publishers before they found a home. Sometimes these books only get a modest offer from one publisher, but go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies (and then later, after much success, they are cited by every editor as the type of dream book that they wish to acquire).
That Garmus essentially put two novels in a drawer before she found an agent who would take her on should be the first takeaway here. Did the first 100 agents just miss her mastery and genius? Unlikely. The truth is that there are a lot of literary agents out there, and with exceptions the two questions that drive their motivations come down to: Is it good? Will it sell? It’s likely that her first book might not have hit high enough marks in its answers to these two questions. But that didn’t stop Garmus from continuing to write, and writing a good piece of fiction can take a tremendous amount of time. Neither did all that rejection stop her from getting an agent and large deal when she did finally come back with a novel that was great. This is truly a lesson in how limitless the chances are for writers in this business, for as much as accomplishment in publishing often feels fraught with crabs-in-a-barrel scarcity.
Post-publication, the second thing that stands out about Lessons in Chemistry is that its success on this monumental level was not a given. It did hit the list its first week on sale, but only at the bottom, at #14 selling a respectable 5,000ish copies in hardcover. Not a bad first week for a debut novel, but a drop in the bucket for the publisher who paid a million dollar advance. Having paid that kind of money, if you don’t hit the list, it’s an unmitigated disaster. Hitting low on the list is the start, but not worth stretching for any kind of victory lap. Like Garmus’ journey to publishing herself, the book did not go on to have a straight line of success from there; it hung around the bottom of the list, and even fell off entirely for a brief spell in June. But finally, those months and months of being at the bottom of the list accumulated into something bigger. Usually, the sales curve on a book is a simple downward slope that finds a level and stays there with an occasional spike—it’s rare for any book to go back up past its peak after week one. That’s when you know you have something special, and in fiction the usual cause isn’t publicity or media like with nonfiction, it’s more hearteningly probably because people like the book. Thus, a full eight months after its publication Lessons in Chemistry went from the bottom of the list to #4 and then #1 in December of last year. Success, especially in book publishing, is very often a circuitous path on a long timeline.
When the Market is Wrong
The insanity of Lessons in Chemistry is that it was a debut novel, from someone unknown, without a “platform,” bought for an ungodly amount of money, and the publishing industry still got it completely wrong. Seven figures actually turned out to be a low price for the sales the novel has and will achieve. It’s rare that you see this type of inefficiency in publishing. It’s the inefficiency of: everyone was positive about a book and “right” about it’s quality, but they weren’t enthusiastic enough. Usually, as you might imagine, it goes the other way—books that are bought for a lot of money and don’t live up to the hype. This is a reminder that the publishing industry as a whole is often unable to properly predict which books will work and how much to pay for them.
Winner-take-all
The story of Bonnie Garmus should be an inspirational one for editors, writers, and publishers. One of the bestselling books of the year didn’t need a large social media following or a viral moment to find a massive readership. It’s all because she wrote a really good book (anecdotally, I’ve not heard a bad review from people inside or outside the book world) that got a massive push from its publishers. On one hand, it’s merit in action, the industry working at its best. But there is a dark lining to the story of Lessons in Chemistry as a bestseller: even though it’s an uplifting example in many respects, it is still evidence that book publishing is becoming a winner-take-all race to the top. Either write the one book that gets a million-dollar advance, the Good Morning America (or other major book club) pick, and 40 weeks on the bestseller list, or…get rejected by 100 agents and never see the light of day.
If there’s any hand wringing to be done here, it’s that media and to a certain extent publishers are circling their wagons, and of even more concern is that readers are too, minting only a few books that get to achieve this virtuous cycle and never leave the top of the heap to make way for new authors and books (i.e. Crawdads: 100 weeks as a bestseller). More than ever, it seems the old ways of building author’s careers is waning and we seem to be moving in what is a more positive direction of: good fiction can come from anywhere and if the book delivers it doesn’t matter who the author is. But that comes with the draw-back of a one-off culture, one that favors feast or famine over the steady building of a writer’s audience and commitment to hitting singles and doubles rather than always swinging for home runs. Bonnie Garmus may go on to write many bestselling novels, but each will have to, in some respects, climb the mountaintop on its own.
Back Matter: One link? One link?
If you only click on one link this week, make it this one about Elizabeth Koch, it’s a doozy and will unlock the meaning behind this Tuesday’s subtitle. Fun fact: Elizabeth Koch also owns the independent publisher Catapult, which shuttered its literary magazine and writing classes last week.