What Mega-Selling Authors Know That You Could Use to Boost Your Sales

Does the promise in the above headline turn you off? Does Samuel Johnson’s claim that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” offend you? The answers to these questions are important to your career. While higher sales are not necessarily proportionate to literary excellence, higher sales can be achieved by doing the right things. This blog entry is about doing the right things.

If you follow the rules of writing, strive for literary excellence, and you are content with producing books that are well received and well reviewed, then I would say that you are an author who “writes to the needs of the novel.” Authors who take this approach often see themselves as producers of durable goods: namely books that can have an independent existence on bookshelves and in the hands of fans.

On the other hand, if you follow the rules of writing, while also, at the same time, taking additional efforts to create the best “reading experience” for your readers, then I would say that you are an author who writes to “the reading experience.” Authors who write to “the reading experience” often see themselves as producers of consumable goods like gourmet meals. They are creating intangible experiences – not books. One of the best “reading experience” authors, Janet Evanovich, says that she creates “entertainment” and considers herself more an entertainer than a writer.

For “reading experience” authors, books are similar to sheet music in that they only obtain a significant reality when they are being “played” in the mind of a human.

Accomplished “reading experience” authors realize that fans don’t actually want romance books – many already have embarrassingly large TBR piles. Fans don’t even really want to read romance books. What fans want and what fans buy are the “reading experiences” and thus the “bundle of feelings” these books are capable of providing.


Romance fans can actually have “cravings” for specific feelings -- just as they can have cravings for specific foods (for example, chocolate and potato chips). Even a fan who has over 100 books in her TBR pile, may still buy your book because she is craving the “bundle of feelings” she hopes she will obtain by reading your current “hidden child” theme romance. In a way, your novel is the sheet music for creating the rhythms of passion her soul desires to experience. It’s all about the reading experience. It’s not about ink and paper and books on a shelf.



Ordinarily fans do not read romances to learn how the story will turn out. They know how a romance will turn out, in fact, they are guaranteed a HEA. Fans read romances to satisfy emotional needs that when neglected become cravings. Romances can become addictive because they satisfy important needs.

Please don’t confuse this observation with escapism. To maintain that fans read romances to escape is essentially to make a vacuous claim. There are thousands of ways to “escape” -- from alcohol consumption to Zen meditation. The significant question is always this: “why do fans choose romance novels as their vehicle of escape?” This is the question that needs to be answered if you want to be in the best position to satisfy the needs of your fans and increase your readership.

Ask yourself this, “Why does anyone do anything?” The Greatest Management Principle (GMP) asserts that “What gets rewarded, gets done.” Fans read romances because the experience is rewarding. Authors who provide the most satisfying reading experiences can expect to enjoy an ever growing fan base.

In researching the romance genre over the last seven years, I have found that competent authors, who reward the reader the most times per page, tend to have the highest sales. Can you guess which romance author my research indicates has the highest number of rewards per page (RPP)? Nora Roberts*. Another high scorer is Janet Evanovich.

I believe measuring “rewards per page” (RPP) can help precinct future romance writing success. I also believe that writing to “the reading experience”, when well executed, can propel competent authors to much higher sales. However, “rewards per page” (RPP) is not a panacea. You still have to do everything else right. All the rules of writing still apply. You just have to change your focus from “your novel being judged as a totality” to “your novel being judged as a rewarding, page-by-page, reading experience”.

In future blogs (if there are any) I will cover some of the many ways that authors employ to reward readers. I will suggest a method for visualizing what is going on in your reader’s mind at any given point in your novel. I will also deconstruct the reading experience with an emphasis on comparing actual and vicarious feelings.

In the most important sense, your novel only exists when it is being “played” in the mind of a reader. It is very important, therefore, to be aware of what is going on in the reader’s mind as you compose each page. Indeed, from the point of view of increasing book sales, this approach is just as important as meeting the technical requirements the novel itself.

By the way, no one has to do any of this. There is no literary imperative that authors have to write to produce maximum sales. It is not even necessary to produce good “reading experiences”. I did not enjoy reading “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Of Mice and Men,” “The Return of the Native,” or any number of other books which I struggled through but am now glad I finished.

What I would like to do here is give you the option of expanding your fan base to the maximum and thereby allow you to enjoy the benefits of occupying the highest tax bracket.

Thanks,

Vince

WIP “A Random Walk Through Romanceland.”

*Rewards-per-page (RPP) scores are based on preliminary findings of a still evolving methodology. As the system is refined scores change but the relative standing of individual authors have remained the same. I could write an entire book on the difficulty of measuring RPP while adjusting for sub-genre differences and choosing comparative testing samples from each book.