I think Max Brooks’ World War Z was a surprise. Its publishers probably saw it as another zombie novel in a crowded genre and expected it might sell about as many copies as Brooks’ previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide.
Probably not even that as it wasn’t “another zombie novel in a crowded genre.” The only “zombie novels” back when World War Z was published were decades-old knockoffs of Night of the Living Dead.
Whoever told Sue Grafton she coud write was demented.
I tried to read a couple James Patterson books back in the day. Damn he is a bad bad writer. Unreadably bad.
I, um, like Sue Grafton.
I have to disagree. She’s not a great writer, but she’s certainly competent, and the opening of A is for Alibi is just wonderful.
This book has been on bestseller lists forever, and was still in the top ten for paperback books in the N.Y. Times listing as of last Sunday. Given how long it’s been around, I wonder how it has managed to continue to allegedly sell so many copies. Maybe there are lots of air travelers desperate for reading matter who just glom onto the first thing they see in the “top ten bestsellers” section of the airport bookstore.
No, there was an existing zombie genre in horror fiction. Stuff like Walter Greatshell’s Xombies, Stephen King’s Cell, David Moody’s Autumn, Brian Keene’s The Rising, John Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead, and David Wellington’s Monster Island were all published in the five year period before World War Z.
You’re right, that’s not all there was. But it’s unlikely these books paved the way for World War Z (the success of The Zombie Survival Guide did that)…
Stephen King’s Cell is a book by Stephen King. The man could write about anything and it would sell. Not indicative of a genre. Especially since it references The Stand a great deal.
David Moody’s Autumn and John Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead weren’t released in America until well after WWZ.
Walter Greatshell’s Xombies, Brian Keene’s The Rising and David Wellington’s Monster Island were all very small time. None had the marketing push WWZ got with booksellers/librarians.
Seems like Naked Came the Stranger warrants a mention, although its success didn’t surprise the authors.
“[The] intention was to write a deliberately terrible book with a lot of sex, to illustrate the point that popular American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. The book fulfilled the authors’ expectations and became a bestseller in 1969; they revealed the hoax later that year, further spurring the book’s popularity.”
I’m still a bit surprised that Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land became influential.
Yeah, I’ve never been able to grok that.
This goes back a ways, but Life’s Little Instruction Book not only sold millions of copies, but launched a whole industry of spin-offs, calendars, and other related products. It’s not that it was bad, but just so uninspired. It was just a desultory list of one line bits of advice, like “Drink your milk.” “Be nice to people.” “Finish your work on time.” People just like lists I guess.
In the same vein: Chicken Soup for the Soul. It didn’t even bring anything new to the table; it just collected a bunch of existing schmaltzy stories under one cover. The title was apparently the spark that led it to sell millions. Well, you can’t have chicken soup without schmaltz!
Squiggly letters with backwards "e"s, scratched out sections and blotches of smeared ink.
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Back around 1980-ish, it seemed like there was no escaping this book. It won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award. Everybody I knew seemed to own a copy, and if you turned on NPR somebody would be talking about it. It was generally viewed as this incredibly cool book about how music and art and math were all the same thing, or something like that. (In Hofstadter’s defense, he has repeatedly said that the book isn’t about that at all.) I tried to read it and gave up around page 50 or so. I found it impossibly dense, pedantic, and obtuse, and marred by the author’s peculiar fixation on cutesy puns and palindromes. To this day I wonder how many people who bought it actually read it.
I read Gödel, Escher, Bach in the late 1980s after being recommended it by one of my computer science professors. I still remember it vividly - it was about a specific theme (or set of themes) that ran through most of those three men’s work - symmetries, permutations, and meta-level self-description paradoxes. It’s incredibly cool to, let’s say, people who think Moebius strips and Klein bottles are incredibly cool - and in a similar way.
I am also surprised it was widely popular.
Actually most books that are faddishly popular, and not sequels to previously also popular or by authors who have a proven track record of that level of popularity, surprise me. It seems as though it’s partly luck in most cases.
I always refer to The Da Vinci Code as Foucault’s Pendulum for Dummies
Uncle John’s Bathroom Book. It’s completely mystifying that American felt so drawn to a collection of short stories that you can read on the toilet. It’s been so popular that it has copycats and spin offs. crazy.
“Valley of the Dolls”, sold extremely well and was a poorly written piece of schlock.
The one that most blows my mind is my own Who Pooped in the Park? kids’ series. It was just a little fun side project and I NEVER expected to sell so many (almost 400,000 copies so far). That’s about 1,000 times as much as any of my “serious” books. It feels very strange.
Just for the record, there’s a big difference between “800,000 copies in print” and “800,000 sold.” Your link says the latter.
In my humble opinion, this is why Dan Brown hit the bestseller lists with The Da Vinci Code. I don’t think anyone in the field would call it good writing, but he has a way of gripping readers with his storytelling. It also didn’t hurt that the book hit the market with a very controversial topic at just the right time. Even the Purdue lawsuit and the Baigent & Leigh lawsuit only managed to get more press (and probably more sales) for the book.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:38, topic:662522”]
Just for the record, there’s a big difference between “800,000 copies in print” and “800,000 sold.” Your link says the latter.
[/QUOTE]
I believe you mean the former.
Mary Roach was the “In Depth” subject yesterday on C-SPAN 2’s “About Books”. It’s a 3-hour interview, and I definitely Tivo’d it. Haven’t watched it yet, however.
How about “A Million Little Pieces”? IDK about anyone else, but I read it after he was exposed as a fraud, and would have recognized it as fiction on the very first page.
And folks, “Watership Down” is a story about rabbits. Sorry, but it is. I did enjoy the movie, however, and recognized it as an allegory of the Soviet takeover of East Germany.