Writing Models

Romance author Sara Donati/Rosina Lippi explores the makeup of best sellers in Storytelling. She's been using the pretty Venn diagram below. I am becoming more convinced that marketing, especially via Internet buzz, is less a wildcard than a causal factor, especially for nonfiction books. Earlier this year I gathered information on a tangential question about the potential effects of the Internet on the book publishing industry. Mind Hacks author Matt Webb confirmed to me that whenever his book is mentioned online, there's a spike in sales at Amazon. Sci-fi novelist Cory Doctorow and Amazon explorer Chris Anderson made similar statements. The cascading effects of blog mentions for Freakonomics has been analyzed, and we note the coming of buzz businesses like BzzAgent to ensure books reach The Tipping Point, a la Malcom Gladwell.



Contemporary writers straddle the transition from paper to digital, and some researchers predict, as the British Library reports, the publishing world will be almost all digital. Each publishing version has its advantages, as long as enough people can afford paper books. Electronic media appear to have the edge in marketing economics, however, and that's why I would suggest a revised model with marketing a fourth factor. We can still use the Donati/Lippi design above, if we consider the dark pink background as the marketing in which the three elements are embedded. The thicker and richer the foundation, like a nurturing matrix for the embryo book, the greater the probability that it will sell well. Can the buzz be big enough to compensate for lacks in the other three components? I'm not sure we haven't already seen it happen with books like Dan Brown's runaway Da Vinci Code. [Tectags: best sellers books digital marketing buzz]

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