Some 55,000 new novels are published each year as well as countless self-published ebooks. Only a fraction become bestsellers: Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers estimate less than half a percent make it on to the New York Times bestseller list. Publishers find it hard to spot these literary black swans. Rowling was turned down by 12 editors and John Grisham by 16. Lisbeth Salander was dismissed by editors as “a bit moody and aggressive for a female lead”. Archer and Jockers think publishers need a little scientific help. A former publishing professional and an academic working in the new field of digital humanities, they spent five years analysing bestsellers and designing a computer model – a “bestsellerometer” –to identify “blockbuster DNA” in manuscripts. It turned out to be remarkably successful: “Eighty to 90 percent of the time the bestsellers in our research corpus were easy to spot.” It may not be destined for the bestseller charts itself, but this thought-provoking study should be on the reading list of every editor and aspiring writer.
