The Unexpected Blockbuster Effect

Every few years, a book or series of books comes out that sells a bazillion copies more than anyone expected it to. Examples include The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter books, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Twilight. (The key here is “more than anyone expected” – Stephen King’s books sell in huge numbers, but that’s been considered normal for him ever since Carrie.)

An unexpected blockbuster nearly always has two major effects on the book market, one on editors and the other on writers. (Very occasionally, there’s a third effect that impacts everything at once, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

First, the editors. When a gazillion people buy a book, editors assume (usually correctly) that the book gave those readers something they really wanted but haven’t been getting from the usual run of published books. Editors also suspect that a lot of people will want “more of that.” Sometimes the editors don’t do well at identifying exactly what “that” is – if a fantasy about a baker in near-historical medieval Japan hits big, is it because readers want more books about bakers, more fantasy, more about Japan, more historicals, or some combination of two or three of those elements? (Often the answer is “Actually, they fell in love with the characters.”)

But whether or not they pinpoint the exact thing readers liked about the hit, editors start looking for other books that will scratch that itch, and buying manuscripts that are sort-of-kind-of-maybe like that. Which brings us to the effect on writers, which comes in several parts.

Writers are also readers. Some of them inevitably will be among the folks who love the huge blockbuster hit and want more stuff “like that,” but unlike the majority of readers, writers can do something about it. They can sit down and write stuff that scratches their “like that” itch – and they do.

There are other writers who didn’t fall in love with the blockbuster hit, or who liked it but found it flawed in some way. Most of them will shrug and work on something different, but some of them will sit down and write a book that’s sort-of “like that” but that fixes what they perceive as the flaws in the original, or subverts its ideas in some way. There are also professional writers whose agents or editors suggest that they write something “like that”, and who are sufficiently intrigued by the idea to do it.

Finally, there are writers who weren’t thrilled by the blockbuster itself, but who are convinced that the best way to break into publishing (or to improve their sales, if they’ve already sold a book or two) is to write something “like that.” This rarely works as well as they expect it to, because these folks are even worse at pinpointing what “that” is than editors (mostly because the “that” they’re trying to hit isn’t whatever was in the original novel; it’s what the editors have decided “that” is, which is hard to figure out unless one actually knows and talks to some editors).

Both the effect on editors and the effect on writers work together to get more books published that are “like that”, and fewer books published that are not “like that” (i.e., everything else). Editors have both a limited budget and a limited number of books their company can publish in a year; writers have a limited amount of writing time and energy. Time and money that’s spent on more “like that” cannot be spent on anything else; writing or publishing more “like that” therefore obviously means not writing or publishing as much stuff that isn’t “like that.”

Eventually, the flood ebs. Editors get tired of buying the same old quest fantasy, and start looking for something different (but not so different that it won’t sell). Writers start getting the itch to write something different – maybe something more realistic or more literary, like the New Wave SF of the 1960s and 70s, maybe something that crosses two previously separate genres, like fantasy-police-procedurals or supernatural romances. Something hits big, and we’re off to the races with a different “like that,” and the previous set that “aren’t like (the new) that” lose slots in the market.

The exception is the very, very rare book that is different enough and popular enough to expand the book market as a whole by creating a whole new type of category fiction. The Virginian did this for Westerns, the Sherlock Holmes stories did it for mysteries, and The Lord of the Rings did it for fantasy. None of these were the first story or novel that could be classified as a Western, a mystery, or a fantasy. They were simply the first of a type to attract a large enough following (sometimes in conjunction with critical acclaim) that inspired enough readers to want more, enough writers to write similar things, and enough editors to publish them, so that a new, self-sustaining marketing category gets established.

The main thing to remember about this cycle is that it is unexpected. The authors who wrote these blockbuster-hit trendsetters certainly believed in them and crafted them carefully, but the degree of success involved was still a lot more than most of them anticipated. Sometimes, even the eventual publishers didn’t think they would do well. Rayner Unwin, the acquiring editor for The Lord of the Rings, expected to lose a thousand pounds sterling on the trilogy, but asked permission to buy it anyway. His father, the head of the publishing house, cabled back to him “If you believe it is a work of genius, then you may lose a thousand pounds.”

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is never any guarantee that what someone writes for the pure love of the thing will sell at all, let alone sell millions of copies. The chances of a blockbuster happening to a given writer are, in fact, exceedingly slim. What many would-be writers seem to ignore, however, is the fact that the chances of any other kind of work (i.e., one not written from the writer’s conviction) becoming a blockbuster are even slimmer.