{"id":14427,"date":"2018-11-28T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T00:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14427"},"modified":"2018-11-29T00:03:58","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T00:03:58","slug":"what-big-data-can-tell-us-about-how-a-book-becomes-a-best-seller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-big-data-can-tell-us-about-how-a-book-becomes-a-best-seller\/","title":{"rendered":"What big data can tell us about how a book becomes a best-seller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albert-L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Barab\u00e1si<\/a>, Northeastern University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The average American reads 12 or 13 books a year, but with over 3 million books in print, the choices they face are staggering. <\/p>\n

Despite the introduction of 100,000 new titles each year, only a tiny fraction of these attract a large enough readership to make The New York Times best-seller list.<\/p>\n

Which raises the questions: How does a book become a best-seller, and which types of books are more likely to make the list?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a data scientist<\/a>. Recently, with help of Burcu Yucesoy<\/a>, a postdoc in my lab, I put the reading habits of Americans under our data microscope<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We did so by analyzing the sales patterns<\/a> of the 2,468 fiction and 2,025 nonfiction titles that made The New York Times best-seller list for hardcovers during the last decade.<\/p>\n

Real lives, imaginary action<\/h2>\n

The first thing the data reminded me is just how few books in my favorite category, science, become best-sellers \u2013 a paltry 1.1 percent. Science books compete for a spot on the nonfiction list with everything from business to history, sports to religion. <\/p>\n

Yet, on the whole, hardcovers in these categories don\u2019t fly off the shelves, either. <\/p>\n

Which nonfiction titles do? Memoir and biographies, with almost half of the 2,025 nonfiction best-sellers falling into this category.<\/p>\n

Then we examined the fiction list. Much of the press focuses on literary fiction \u2013 books we see debated by critics, lauded as important and culturally relevant, and eventually taught in schools. <\/p>\n

But in the past decade, only 800 books categorized as literary fiction made the best-seller list. Most best-sellers \u2013 67 percent of all fiction titles \u2013 represent plot-driven genres like mystery or romance or the kind of thrillers that Danielle Steel<\/a> and Clive Cussler<\/a> write.<\/p>\n

Action sells \u2013 there\u2019s no surprise there. <\/p>\n

But it was unexpected the degree to which only a handful of authors repeatedly appear: Eight-five percent of best-selling novelists have landed multiple books on the list. Mystery and thriller novelist James Patterson<\/a>, for example, had 51 books on the best-seller list in the period we explored.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n James Patterson has sold over 100 million copies of his book, grossing more than US$1 billion in sales.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/Wilfredo Lee<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By contrast, only 14 percent of nonfiction authors had more than one best-selling book. Perhaps this is because the genre often requires expertise on a specific subject matter. If an author primarily writes about football, or neuroscience, or even her own life, it\u2019s difficult to generate 10 books on the topic.<\/p>\n

A universal sales curve<\/h2>\n

Publishers eagerly slap \u201cNew York Times Bestseller\u201d stickers on each book that appears on the list\u2019s 15 slots.<\/p>\n

A quarter of those, however, have only a cameo appearance, briefly grabbing a spot at the bottom of the list and dropping out after a single week. Only 37 percent have some staying power and spend more than four weeks on the best-seller list. Even fewer \u2013 8 percent \u2013 attain the number one spot.<\/p>\n

Some rare exceptions can lease out a spot for years: \u201cThe Help<\/a>\u201d by Kathryn Stockett lingered on the fiction list for an astonishing 131 weeks, while Laura Hillenbrand\u2019s \u201cUnbroken<\/a>\u201d stayed on the nonfiction list for a record 203 weeks. <\/p>\n

One big misconception is that you have to write a mega-seller to make the list. The majority of titles on The New York Times best-seller list only sell between 10,000 and 100,000 copies in their first year. \u201cThe Slippery Year<\/a>,\u201d a 2009 memoir by Melanie Gideon, made the list with a yearly sale of fewer than 5,000 copies.<\/p>\n

How is this possible? <\/p>\n

Our data set shows that just about your only chance of making the list is right after your publication date. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because book sales, we discovered, follow a universal sales curve \u2013 there\u2019s a single mathematical formula that captures the weekly sales of all books. And that sales curve has a prominent peak right after the release, meaning you sell the most copies during the first weeks after your book\u2019s release. Fiction sales almost always peak within the first two to six weeks; for nonfiction, the peak can come any time during the first 15 weeks.<\/p>\n