Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers Read Online Free Page A

readers and publishers had little reason to come to it beyond the appeal of the story itself. The combination of factors that sets apart that bestselling first novel from the hundreds of other first novels that remain in obscurity is exactly what my research was attempting to uncover.
    After first novels, the next most instructive books are those that used to be known as a “breakout” novels—that is, the first book of an established author that cracks the bestseller list.
    Back when publishers had the patience and the financial wherewithal to nurture a writer through the early, unprofitable stages of his or her career, it was not uncommon for a novelist to publish half a dozen books or more that didn’t make a profit without being abandoned by the editor or publisher, usually because the editor was convinced the writer’s work was solid and worthy and would one day find a larger audience. As a more tightfisted corporate model gradually replaced this charitable system, and publishers were buffeted by a succession of economic and industry upheavals, the patience required to wait for a “breakout book” all but disappeared. These days, if a writer does not succeed on the first or second try, his or her career is likely to flatline.
    Of the twelve books on the list we’ll be examining, a surprising seven were first novels:
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
Peyton Place
,
Valley of the Dolls
,
Gone with the Wind
,
Jaws
,
The Bridges of Madison County
, and
The Hunt for Red October
. The rest appeared early enough in the writers’ careers to qualify as “breakout” novels. Grisham’s
The Firm
was his second attempt, while
The Godfather
was Puzo’s third book. William Peter Blatty wrote four comic novels before he circled in on
The Exorcist. The Da Vinci Code
was Dan Brown’s third try. Stephen King had already cranked out eight books before
The Dead Zone
finished as the year-end number six bestseller.
    The Dead Zone
is unique among the others on my list. At roughly 175,000 hardbacks sold, its numbers fall far short of
The Godfather
or
Gone with the Wind
or the others we’re considering. I included
The Dead Zone
because it was the first year-end bestselling hardback from one of the top commercialwriters in history, a novelist who went on to publish dozens of number one bestsellers. How could any study of bestsellers omit Stephen King?
FEMALE SCRIBBLERS
    Another factor I considered in fine-tuning my reading list was gender. Diversity is a tricky matter. As Leslie Fiedler wrote in “Literature and Lucre,” “The struggle of High Art and low has, moreover, been perceived as a battle of the sexes. Referring to the writers who had preempted the paying audience before he ever entered the scene, Nathaniel Hawthorne called them a ‘horde of female scribblers.’ ”
    When more than three-quarters of the book-buying public are women, one would assume that female authors would populate the bestseller lists in greater proportion than men. But that’s not the case. Based on a quick and totally unscientific sampling, using the results for the year-end bestselling totals for the opening year of each decade, I found quite the opposite to be true:
    In 1900 two of ten were women.
In 1910 five of ten were women.
In 1920 three of ten were women.
In 1930 four of ten were women.
In 1940 one of ten were women.
In 1950 three of ten were women.
In 1960 two of ten were women.
In 1970 two of ten were women.
In 1980 two of ten were women.
In 1990 five of ten were women.
    So in the twentieth century, the average is somewhere around two or three women on the year-end list. Far less than half and not at all what Nathaniel Hawthorne so chauvinistically imagined. John Bear, in his collection of intriguing facts about bestsellers (
The
#
1 New York Times Best Seller
), graphs the gradual increase in female authors who have achieved the number one slot on the
Times
list. From the forties through the eighties, the percentage of women reaching the pinnacle