The Bestseller Code : Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

Product Description “Non-formulaic, eye-opening, deeply-researched and really worth your time.” GQ Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers' The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel is a big idea book that explains their text-mining research through a groundbreaking look at the New York Times bestseller list. It explores the relationship between creativity and analytics, picking bestsellers via algorithm with a high degree of accuracy. We know that technology has transformed the worlds of finance, medicine, and sports; now it's making its mark on books.Ask most people about massive success in the world of fiction, and you’ll typically hear that it’s a game of hazy crystal balls. The sales figures of E. L. James or Dan Brown seem to be freakish random occurrences in an unknowable market. But what if there were an algorithm that could reveal a secret DNA of bestsellers, regardless of their genre What if it knew, just from analyzing the words alone, not just why genre writers like John Grisham and Danielle Steel belong on the lists, but also that authors such as Junot Diaz, Jodi Picoult, and Donna Tartt had telltale signs of success all over their pages The algorithm exists; the code has been cracked; and the results bring fresh new insights into how fiction works and why we read. The Bestseller Code offers a new theory for why Fifty Shades of Grey sold so well. It sheds light on the current craze for dark heroines. It reveals which themes tend to sell best. And all with fascinating supporting data taken from a five-year study of twenty thousand novels. Then there is the hunt for "the one" the paradigmatic example of bestselling writing according to a computer's analysis of thousands of points of data. The result is surprising, a bit ironic, and delightfully unorthodox.At heart, The Bestseller Code is a celebration of books for readers and writers a compelling investigation into how successful writing works, and a fresh take on our intellectual and emotional response to stories. Review "Non-formulaic, eye-opening, deeply-researched and really worth your time." GQ "A thought-provoking and interesting book." The Financial Times"Reveals the diverse directions in which popular fiction may be taken. . . the bestseller-ometer may find its most noble application as a democratizing force" The Atlantic"[T]his is a delightful book to read. I would recommend it as both an entertaining and educational read for anybody interested in the business of books." Digital Book World Daily"This interesting little tome shares some of the Bookputer’s insights with us, just in case we want to become author-millionaires too. And who doesn’t . . . Fascinating." The Times Review"Aspiring novelists who thumb through this volume will find plenty to think about. . . [T]his book actually represents an opportunity for literary scholars." Public Books"Archer is not some Silicon Valley whizz-kid looking to reduce the novel to 0s and 1s, nor is she a pretentious academic coming over the hills to sling around jargon about middlebrow novels. . . [She] is smart, savvy and full of ideas." The Times of London"A laboratory is a more compelling setting than a church." The Wall Street Journal, which named The Bestseller Code one of the most-anticipated books of Fall 2016"[The] claims are eye-grabbing. . . [and] also highly plausible." The Spectator"Archer and Jockers “are ‘literature-friendly’ and want good books to succeed." Wired"When a story captures the imagination of millions, that's magic. Can you qualify magic Archer and Jockers just may have done so." Sylvia Day, New York Times bestselling author"The Bestseller Code excited me, scared me, and generally blew my mind. Archer and Jockers have built a reading robot that can teach readers, writers, and publishers a great deal about how popular fiction works. This is a pioneering work in a new science of storytelling." Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Anim