Christopher Hart
Fifty Shades of Success
The Bestseller Code
By Jodie Archer & Matthew L Jockers
Allen Lane 242pp £20 order from our bookshop
Computers are already fighting our wars for us, managing our economy, taking away our jobs and beating us at chess. Now, to cap it all, it seems they are presuming to advise us on how to write novels as well. Or, at least, bestselling novels. This ought to be annoying, but I have to admit that the results of computer surveys into what makes a bestseller are actually of compelling interest and full of the sorts of facts and stats that some of us really enjoy. Did you know, for instance, that there is a specific BISAC code for ‘historical romance novels with Vikings’?
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