FrostMorning
411 posts









Lee Child has sold 200 million books, which makes him one of the best-selling authors in history. Here's his advice for people who want to sell lots and lots of books: "In order to sell a lot of books, you've got to push the boundary outward to the outer rings of Saturn... to the audience of people that read one or two books a year. And you've also got to satisfy the habitual, skillful, and literate readers in the center at the same time. But the people on the outskirts are not habitual readers. Structurally, what you've got to do is have a style that is both palatable and somewhat enjoyable to the habitual readers in the center, but also useful to the people on the outside. I spend a lot of time concentrating on rhythm, the rhythm of a sentence, because a book is however many thousands of sentences in a row, and you've got to make it so that each sentence has a rhythm, and that rhythm must always be tripping forward, forward, forward. It's about propulsion. It's about creating a style the experienced reader can appreciate. But for the people on the outside, the non-habitual readers, I have my hand gently on their back, pushing them through. They don't notice. They're not aware of it. But I'm easing them through the process of finishing the book."











