Publishers used to tell readers what was hot. Now it’s the other way round

TAKE the plot of “Jane Eyre” (rich man with issues falls for innocent young lass), strip away the introspection, add some S&M sex and you have “Fifty Shades of Grey”. E.L. James's novel is the hottest book so far this year, having sold 2m copies in three weeks in America.

The book's appeal is obvious, says James Hall, the author of “Hit Lit”, who claims to crack “the code” of bestsellers. He reckons that every mega-hit is fast, emotionally charged and written simply, with a maverick hero who is in over his head. Each discusses a thorny issue and includes a pivotal sexual incident.

But it is easy to see a pattern in hindsight. The money is in prediction, which is tough and growing tougher. This is because readers have more power than ever, says Joel Rickett, an editor at Penguin. Publishers used to be able to create winners by flooding stores with their picks. The bestseller lists of the 1980s and 1990s were dominated by brand names such as Stephen King and Danielle Steel. Industry mergers and bookstore monoliths made hype easy.

But now readers can go online to berate overhyped books that fail to thrill. “It's a lot harder for a publisher to sustain an illusion of a big new success,” Mr Rickett observes. And thanks to social media, word of mouth spreads faster than ever before, giving unknown writers a better shot. Today, a bestseller must usually appeal either to young people (who use social media a lot) or women (who dominate reading groups).

“The Help”, Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel about black maids and white families in Mississippi, crowned best-seller lists after reading groups raved about it. “I don't know a single man who's read that,” says Mr Rickett, whose company published it.

Ms James's “mommy porn” is another reading-group favourite. It won an e-book following through a tiny publisher last year. Random House, America's biggest publisher, then secured the rights for a seven-figure sum and released a horde of copies in April. The “Hunger Games” trilogy, a story about adults treating teenagers terribly, is so popular among Facebooking youngsters that this week it prompted Scholastic, its publisher, to raise its profit forecast for 2012.

Gone are the days when publishers pumped out books and waited to see what worked. Now they try to market fewer, better tomes with greater energy. Middling authors are left to small imprints or to self-publish. Those who thrive are poached: Amanda Hocking's self-published paranormal fiction yielded a $2.1m contract last year with Macmillan, a big publisher.

Readers are buying a greater variety of books than ever, with weekly sales of 220,000 different ones in Britain alone, according to Nielsen BookScan. From this vast pool, the networked crowd picks a few bestsellers. Mr Hall wonders why publishers do not do a better job of predicting future hits from past ones. Because it's hard, perhaps? Who foresaw the popularity of boy wizards or sociopathic Scandinavians? The only safe bet is that a hit will attract imitators. Expect a glut of mommy porn.