In this optimization-obsessed age, it can feel downright subversive to say that gut feelings are more valuable than statistics. But the process of making art was never a numbers game. It’s the unquantifiable qualities that make the great books great: you know them when you see them.
Commerce, of course, is different. Such discord illustrates the book industry’s debut novel conundrum. You’re asking a publisher to take a chance on a writer with no track record at a time when social media numbers mean almost nothing.
Maybe if the author is well-connected their work will come with a few fancy blurbs from other writers vouching for this new talent, but beyond that there’s not much else to go on except the work. All you’ve got is the hope of introducing a new writer to the world and hoping readers will like the way that writer arranges the words on a page. Back when I was an assistant at Simon & Schuster in the early aughts I was introduced to the concept of the “make book,” a particular book that an editor or publisher felt extra passionate about and wanted to try to “make” a success.
A make book did not depend on the recognizability of the author’s name or the sellability of their idea; it was all in the execution. The job of the editor was to spread their enthusiasm to sales and marketing and other departments, with the hopes of building momentum for the book that would eventually penetrate the outside world. The idea of the make book is essentially optimistic: that a publisher, through a coordinated labor of love, could turn a book into a bestseller.
The make book requires a number of conditions in order to work: a publisher willing to risk the time and effort of their staff on a book that is not a slam dunk, a wider company ethos that values the making of art, the ability of publishing workers to trust their instincts to determine if a book is special, and, most importantly, a trust in the market to elevate worthy literary material. Viet Than Nguyen’s The Sympathizer is a great example of a make book that worked, as is Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. It’s in looking at these authors bodies of work that I add one more requirement for a make book’s success: the belief that the break out of the debut is not the end goal, but rather the beginning of a sustainable career for a new author.
Make books often aren’t successful–the stars still have to align in a particular way to create a hit and even the most dedicated publishers can’t bend the markets to their will. But there are also plenty of flashy million-dollar debuts whose titles I can no longer remember. Remember: the debut that lands a $1 million advance (think Yesteryear) is not a make book, the debut with a 7-figure advance is one that must achieve some success in order not to be a total flop.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
