Lori Copeland and "The Breakout Book"

For those unfamiliar with the term, "Breakout Book" is an author's first bestseller. That book that takes them to the top of the NYT Bestseller's list.

Many of us slave away over our craft, trying to write the best, most amazing piece of fiction ever written in hopes of achieving that breakout book. But much more goes into it that simply a brilliant piece of work.

My friend and wonderful novelist Lori Copeland posted the following insightful quote on our writer's group and gave permission to add it here:

"Here I go: open mouth insert foot. Breakout books, bestsellers, The
Notebooks and Gone With the Wind books are made by publishers
efforts--and money. We know and completely understand that every
book cannot have full and unlimited marketing support, but the
bestsellers (in the beginning are well orchestrated and not purely
coincidental) Wow! Look at that; he's a best seller and only had
a print run of 6! I can do that too!

"You can't make the reader buy a title, but you can put that title
in front of them in amounts that real sales momentum can be achieved
in first selling days--thirty thousand books out the door right
away. New titles have to be in the store around the same time (
street date) not dribbled out over a period of weeks, reprinted,
dribbled, reprinted, dribble. Every best seller is continued to be
heavily supported in order to keep the author's momentum. ( Yeah,
Left Behind and the likes aside) Vast amounts of money are paid for
title placement, books displayed on 'new' bestseller tables, and on
and on. Authors, through the house, speak to important distributors
vs author sits at mall and points out bathrooms while hoping they'll
sell an autographed book. You could write the best book in the
world, literally, and this loop has some pretty talented,
knowledgeable authors who know how and what goes into a well written
story, but without publisher dollars most titles languish.


"Far better than something telling you how to write the breakout
novel would be publishers sharing how they make the decision ( and
it is made most often if not always when the author comes into the
house) what and how they will support that author. And decisions
change. I've seen houses go full tilt with an author for many
books and fail to bring that author to a true best selling level.
At that time, the party's over and it's on to the next promising
prospect. That's the writing business. For any of us to think that
our books can become best sellers by simply writing a good book is
folly; we can hone our craft, learn all we can, do all we can, pray,
plead, beg and weep but in the end it comes down to marketing.

"Lori--running for cover."