There is a comforting myth in publishing that the best books rise. That readers simply “discover” exceptional writing and carry it to glory. The truth is very different, and far more constructed. Bestsellers are not born. They are built.
I have spent more than two decades inside the machinery of the book business. I know what it looks like when a book is positioned to win, and I know what it looks like when a good book never stands a chance. If we want to understand what culture loses in the process, we must first understand how the system works.
We all like to believe that great books always find their readers. I wish that were true. But in my experience, a book can be extraordinary and vanish quietly, while another becomes visible everywhere. The gap between the two is often not the writing itself, but the resources and positioning behind it.
A publisher makes a choice early, often more than a year before publication: this title will be pushed and this one will not. That decision dictates marketing spend, sales ambition, proof quantities, media pitches, and whether authors are driven across the country or left to tweet alone into the void.
If you ever want to know whether a book is expected to sell, ask how many proofs were printed. That number is often the most accurate indicator of future trajectory.
It begins with the advance. A large advance is not generosity. It is a statement. A publisher will protect the investment. They will spend to ensure that the book is seen, stocked and spoken about. A small advance is often a warning. The industry already anticipates modest performance and resources follow suit.
Marketing spend is not reactive. It is predictive. Visibility is purchased up front. It is why some books are everywhere on publication day and others quietly appear, spine out, waiting for luck.
Books do not usually “break out” by accident. They break out because someone paid for them to be visible long before readers had the chance to decide whether they were worth it.
Retail placement is one of the strongest invisible levers shaping success. A book placed face out at the front of a shop will outperform the same book tucked mid-shelf by a factor that is embarrassing to quantify. Window space changes careers. A table changes careers. A bookseller saying, “Take this,” can change contracts, awards and foreign rights for a decade.
Algorithms behave no differently, except without conscience. They boost what is already selling and bury what is not. They amplify momentum; they do not create it.
This is the most uncomfortable truth: discovery is rarely organic. It is curated long before a browser arrives.
Publication dates are not accidental. They are strategic weapons. A book releasing in early October is competing with gifting psychology. A book released in January must survive a market in financial recovery. A crime novel releasing in the same week as a major franchise author will be drowned before the first review lands. Timing makes or unmakes books as surely as prose does.
Readers often believe they made a book popular. Sometimes that is true, but only after it reaches a threshold. Word of mouth does not ignite unless there is already oxygen. Reviews, early orders, visibility and first-week numbers create the conditions where word of mouth can matter.
A book that never reaches critical mass cannot be talked about, because no one has read it.
It is estimated that many traditionally published books sell fewer than 1,000 copies in their lifetime. Thousands of writers who poured years into a manuscript will never see their work find its readers. That is not because the books failed. It is because they were unseen.
Those losses accumulate culturally. Voices disappear. Perspectives never reach the page.
In this landscape, great booksellers have a rare power. We see a book before the system decides its fate. We hold proofs before they have weight in the world. We decide who we speak for.
For me, that decision is never only commercial. I choose because the story has reached me. When I read a proof and feel the writing stop me, when I feel something shift or recognise something human, I want others to feel that as well. That is the kind of bookseller I am. I champion books that make people feel something.
It does not change the system entirely, but sometimes it changes a writer’s beginning. Occasionally it changes a career.
Publishing is a business. It has to be. But in the UK, that reality is intensified by consolidation. There is only one major national bookshop chain in the market, and the same leadership also oversees the largest bricks-and-mortar chain in the United States. The decisions of a very small number of buyers shape what appears on the nation’s tables, windows and shelves.
When choice is determined centrally, culture risks becoming narrow. The books most visible to the public are the books a few hands have selected. That is why independents matter. We do not buy for a formula. We buy for readers. We widen the field.
If the market continues to decide culture purely by return on investment, literature becomes silent in places where it should speak. We lose difficulty. We lose nuance. We lose books that ask something of us.
A society that reads only what is placed in front of it becomes obedient. A society that seeks what it has not yet been shown becomes alive.
Readers often underestimate their influence. One pre-order changes a sales forecast. One club subscription gives a debut writer proof that somebody is waiting. One choice to buy from a bookshop instead of a platform helps determine what becomes visible in the world.
A bestseller can be built by budget. But a literary culture is built by readers.
If you want to shape what our shelves look like five years from now, the power is already in your hands.
Choose early. Choose widely. Choose the books that make you feel something.
