Do You Know What You’re Trying to Do, When You’re Setting Out to Write a Book (or Anything Else)?

Last week Soccer Dad publisher Kris Pauls shared a quick clip of the author Ann Patchett, answering a question on C-SPAN, about what sells books. “I can give you the definitive answer to that question,” she told America’s Book Club interviewer David Rubenstein:

It is not a book tour, an ad, a radio show, a television show, a celebrity book club pick. The only thing that actually sells books is a person reading a book, and turning around to their friend and saying, ‘Oh my God you have to read this book.’ Books are a word-of-mouth product like nothing else. You can have the best publicity campaign, promotional campaigns, and the book will flop if somebody reads the book and thinks, ‘Okay,’ but they don’t want to share it. And I always say the experience of loving a book is not complete until you have turned around and said to someone, ‘You have got to read this.’

And I’d add that it’s even worse than that, for a writer who wants to sell books. It’s not enough for people to say, “You have got to read this.” The people they say it to have to listen, and buy!

If you started a writing project hoping it would turn out so good that strangers would not only read the thing, but go around forcefully convincing others to read it too in a society where only 16% of people read books for pleasure … well, you’d go back to bed. I’m actually getting a little sleepy just thinking about it.

But however vastly unlikely the notion that you might make something out of thin air that human beings you never heard of might use to connect with one another—”oh, you read that too?!”—that long shot has gotten me to the coffee maker for about 40 years of mornings straight. And I guess it’s gotten me back there again this morning, too.