Unraveling the Secrets of Marketing a Bestseller

Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol sold 2 million copies in its first week. That wasn't an accident.

The Globe and Mail has written a great piece on just some of the extraordinary marketing that has gone into promoting Brown's latest novel. You can read it here: Unraveling the secrets of a marketing bestseller.

Two telling quotes from the article:

"When Dan Brown's new novel The Lost Symbol hit stores this month, literary critics complained it read more like the treatment for a Hollywood thriller."

"The main lesson for publishers and marketers in the success of The Lost Symbol is this: 'Find hits.'"

Why is it still controversial to talk about trying to write commercial fiction that makes lots and lots of readers happy? "Literary critics complained." Are these the same literary critics who led me to have to read Faulkner when I was in school? Are these critics people with the same sensibilities who pick the most depressing movies possible for Best Picture Oscars?

There needs to be two types of critics: one set for the literary market, and another set of critics for commercial fiction. Right now, all commercial fiction has is the reading public who are voting with their wallets. If that's the case, they are hugely out-voting literary critics... again.