WEBVTT

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You might be interested
there\'s a good story about

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there had been an analysis
made of all of the books

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that since books were printed
which ones sold the best.

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And they in this order it was Royal…

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Whether it was the deity God, royalty,

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sex and suspense. So they put…

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they put it into a computer the best
of all those books and commanded

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that computer to write the perfect
book and everyone stood around

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and they pushed the button and the
first line of the book came out,

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\'My God! Screamed the Queen.
I\'ve been raped! Whodunnit?\'

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[music]

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[music]

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How many books did you sell

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all over the world (inaudible).

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Ninety million… ninety million books. How it feels?
Well, I kinds of I find it very hard to believe,

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I mean, you now 90 million just
a number, but when you think

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how many books that is. I… I kind
of… I don\'t really believe it\'s me.

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How could I have done that.
Well, a couple of years ago

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and that was two books ago they had

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80 million in the United States uh… so
God knows what it is all over the world

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I don\'t know there are 33 books out there.

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I\'ve no idea (inaudible) paper backs it must run
into millions. Oh, yeah, sure. But although I ask

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its very odd and I\'m told umm… my
new book comes out (inaudible)

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it just goes out of my mind very quickly.

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Here we are today to talk about the specific
storytelling techniques that uh… go into giving a book

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very high impact, the good news is
that what makes fiction are successful

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is stuff that we control and that we can do
and that\'s what we\'re gonna work on today.

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The first thing I did was to
sign up for writing course

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at New York University. Because I was
yearning, churning and learning to write,

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and I was smart enough to
know that you need to know

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the technique of writing and
that first-class set me straight

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on how to tell a story. And I\'ve been
telling it the same way ever since.

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Because the professors said,
\'Ask yourself two questions.

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Suppose and what if\' and turn that

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incident into fiction. Imagine
that the worst happens,

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the problem cannot be solved, the
conflict escalates to the point

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that it\'s out of control for good.
The dream is dead,

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the desire is bankrupt,
the hope is crushed.

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What is the worst that can happen,

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make it happen. In order
for the worst to happen,

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we in our imaginations
have to let it happen,

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we have to stop protecting our
characters and go there. I know, we can

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because we\'ve all done it in our
lives, right? We\'ve been there,

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we\'ve been at the low point. In my
books there should never be a moment

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when you think, \'Okay, this is a
good moment to stop reading, \'

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that should never happen, okay? I
never want you to feel, \'Okay,

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I will go to sleep now and turn the light
down.\' So you… you always have to feel,

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\'Oh my God! What\'s going to happen next?

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Now the remainder of this exercise…
Can I borrow some of your manuscript?

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Yes, sir. The remainder of this exercise
goes like this, \'Take your manuscript out\'

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and I want you to take it in fistfuls of about
15 or 20 pages and I want you to do this?

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Now I want you

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to pick up the manuscript, but it\'s important
that you pick it up in random order.

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Shuffle them around if two
pages are sequential,

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that\'s no good. If the first
page is on top, that\'s no good.

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Then when you\'ve got the whole thing
completely randomized, stack it up,

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square it up, put it next to your
keyboard and then look at each page

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and ask yourself how can I add
tension in one place here.

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How am I creating apprehension
and uncertainty here?

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There are

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well-developed stories and then there are
poorly-developed stories, but if there were a formula

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for best sellers or for breakout
fiction, believe me I\'d sell it to you,

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but there is no formula, there really
is not a formula. I wish there was.

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This is not a science, it\'s an art form.

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It comes down to the author\'s power
to draw the reader into the story.

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See, all authors can
create an imaginary world,

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good and bad of this popular and unpopular authors, if you…
if you can write a novel you can create an imaginary world,

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but what makes you successful

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is your power to make the reader react
to that world as if it was real.

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So when bad things happen
the reader goes, \'Oh!\'

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and… and when sad things happen a
tear comes to the reader\'s eye,

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and when there\'s danger reader is, \'Oh
my God!\' The… the power to do that

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is what makes a best-selling
author I think.

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A good story must have substance to it.

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I do have a certain style in the
sense I always use young women

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between the ages of maybe 28 and 38

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because by then she\'s had some sort
of career. All of minors self-made,

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they were not born to luxury. I often
will have a journalist, a TV reporter,

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a lawyer, a prosecutor because
they\'re the ones who could logically

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solve the crime, logically
find out what\'s going on.

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You know, you don\'t… You could
have a… a killing in a town,

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but if the lady closes a flower shop and
says, \'Stop close until I solve the crime.\'

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you don\'t believe it

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Even after 20 or 25 years of writing I still uh…
I don\'t really know how this process takes place

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it\'s still very mysterious to me.
Uh… And all I know

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is that to… to an outsider, to
anyone who does a normal job uh…

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what I do during that time doesn\'t look
like work or doesn\'t feel like work.

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I think it\'s very difficult

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to really to decide what makes
a bestseller. In some ways,

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the bestseller is mysterious. I don\'t (inaudible)
think people can set out necessarily

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to write one. It seems like
umm… innocent like politicians,

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very often a politician becomes elected and
very successful because the time is right,

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the country is right for that particular person,
right for that particular change of emphasis

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or change of direction. And sometimes a
book can just meet the need that is there.

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They… That is the book that the… that
the temper of the times demands.

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[music]

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HarperCollins is a global
publishing company

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with revenues of about a… a billion
and a half million dollars,

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quite profitable. Our
headquarters are in Manhattan

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uh… and we also have
HarperCollins Canada in Toronto,

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Harper Collins UK in London,

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HarperCollins ANZ in Sydney Australia
and we have HarperCollins India

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and very soon we will probably
have HarperCollins China.

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Good publishing is good business.
I think that there has been

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a width this age old wisdom that publishing
which started out as a cottage industry

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was not going to be a profitable business.

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It\'s not true if you have good people, first you must
have the authors, so you have to have good editors

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who will bring in the good authors.
If you then practice,

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what I believe is the publishing
ethic which is to take that book

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and run with it from the beginning until the end
of time, if you have good marketing people,

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if you watch your costs, you can absolutely

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have a profitable business.

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Any author would be well advised I think to
find an agent because the duty of an agent

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is to maximize the author\'s income,
that is what they are hired for.

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My view is that authors need agents,

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so they need someone a buffer
between them and the publisher.

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Not to cause havoc or
discord, but to, you know,

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make sure that things go well for
the author that the publisher

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is not cheating the author which
is, you know. We, you know,

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take a percentage. These days
it used to be 10%, it\'s now 15%

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if the author is earnings in
the UK… In… in the home market

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and for sales overseas it is 20%,

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since which is great 20% of
the lot is there\'s a lot,

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20% not very much, is not very much.

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So actually you can do the sums yourself, I mean,
you know, I sell a book for a million pounds

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and I get 50% that\'s £150,000.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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Okay, we\'re starting the first session
of the second-third speed dating,

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so we\'re starting time
three minutes right now.

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[music]

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Hey, nice meeting you. Very good to meet you. Nice
to see you again. How are you? Peter Narodny.

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Peter. Very nice to meet you. Have a seat.

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So Robert my… my story is… is called
Island Boy. It\'s a personal story

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although I do mention a
lot of resource. Okay.

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Umm… Though I also see there\'s a crossover book. So it\'s a
memoir. It\'s a memoir, but I also call it narrative nonfiction.

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Uh… I would say it\'s more of a
woman\'s book. My manuscript is about

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Painting in Paris following the steps of the
impressionists and I go with my girlfriend,

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you see… The rules are hooked
them in the first sentence,

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you know, get the agent interested
as quickly as possible.

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Hi! (inaudible) Hello! Come on in.
How are you?

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Going well, thanks. How are you doing
(inaudible)? Absolute doing fine. So.

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It\'s a sexy things as a
series of seven novels

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that immerses the reader into the
sinful lives of women who are gorgeous

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and the men who fall for them. And
the first story is that of Sophia,

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who takes on the alter ego of St.
Bath after… It is based on a…

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And I definitely think you should take a look
at it. Yeah. But I get it made it too many…

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And one or two… Just speaking as an
agent, I\'m not getting that journey,

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even though I\'m getting how committed

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and writerly you\'re umm… and that can not
necessarily bring you to the results that you want.

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I see. So what\'s your dream now?

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To be a bestselling author and
go on the Oprah Winfrey Show!

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(inaudible) that\'s what everyone wants.
(inaudible) bestseller what do you have in mind…

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On the New York Times bestseller lists umm…

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within the top ten would be great.
Wow! That\'s a big dream.

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That\'s a big dream, but you gotta have dreams,
right? Yeah. So I\'ll just stick to that dream.

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[sil.]

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To buy fiction is difficult

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and can be very costly, and can really fail

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also can really work, but there\'s, I
don\'t I have never been able to come up

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with a formula as to what
fiction to buy or not buy.

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Umm… And I must say that… that
in the risk-taking category,

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there\'s much more risk taken in fiction

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I feel financial risks taken in
fiction, both from low-end to end-high,

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it\'s just it\'s a risky business. But when
something works then you feel good about it.

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[music]

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I love writers, I respect writers. I think
it\'s an amazing thing to come up with a blank…

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to start with a blank page or a blank
screen and wind up with something

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that is between covers, I think it\'s
an amazing task and I respect them.

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So I therefore want to show respect
by umm… by feeding them what I can.

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The truth is that I… I am an author person. A lot of English
editors feel they shouldn\'t interfere in the creative process.

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Whereas American editors
think that\'s their job to…

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to interfere in the creative process
and I like that I enjoy that.

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When somebody says something, I recognize that
they\'re right and so then I have to think of,

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but I\'d have to do the work. I then have to think of how
to change his character to make them more interesting.

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The only person

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who knows a book, what a book is about and how it\'s
written is of course my secretary who types it.

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She is extremely discrete, but I do find

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that she is very useful because she
has a very good literary taste

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very good and I have a lot of
confidence in her so that occasionally

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I might say to her and when she started
what does it bring true to you,

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uh… but frankly I… I don\'t
feel the need really

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to discuss it with you and certainly
not to ask for any advice on it.

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Your editor and you are the parents of the
book. Now obviously you\'re the writer of it,

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but you both have the same desire to
have a good satisfy well-told story

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and that\'s why if he says
something about a chapter

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or a character uh… I always know

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there\'s something there, it might not even be exactly
what he saying, but there is something wrong,

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something isn\'t ringing true.

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The foreign rights market is
a tremendous market for us

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and we try very much to buy World writes. I
feel that it is extremely important for us

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
at HarperCollins to be a true global
publisher in the English language,

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so all anywhere that English is spoken I
want to have global publishing rights.

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
Uh… And I feel very strongly that we
should participate in the foreign rights

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as well because they can be very
lucrative and it really does help

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to have your book published
all over the World.

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:38.000
[music]

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
I\'ve always been fascinated by the bestseller
and how it travels all around the world,

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
I\'m fascinated. Why someone in Beijing
would find the Da Vinci Code,

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
you now, the book they had
to read, how did that get.

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
How did that reached them. What? I did… I did I
understand yet and yet I don\'t understand it.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
Well, it\'s kind of amusing, you know,
I\'ve written stories about uh…

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
Victorian London and the
Middle Ages in England,

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
for example. And these books
have bought by people in Brazil,

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Mexico and China and Moscow.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
Uh… People for whom the country,

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
the… the places I\'m describing must be like
another planet, but my books are popular there,

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
so there must be something in the story
and I suppose the truth of the matter is

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
that the historical period or the location
of the story is only the background

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
and what people love about a story
is the… is the passions involved

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
and I suppose human passions are the
same everywhere, it\'s always about love,

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
and hatred, and fear, and
ambition and revenge,

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
those things in common to everybody. It\'s strange
that when my first three novels were not translated

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into other languages, the reason I was
always given was that they were too British

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and when (inaudible) and my
subsequent books have been translated

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and I asked readers from other countries what I like about
them? They say, \'We like them because they\'re so British.\'

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If you have some kind of abstract notion

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
of what is universal and you try to
touch that, then you\'ll fail I think,

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
you have only to write about uh…
you know, where you\'re from,

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what you\'ve done, of course fictionalize
it as much as possible make it as dramatic

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
and moving and entertaining as possible,
but uh… you now, readers can tell uh…

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whether it\'s uh… really coming from

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something important inside you are not, they…
they can tell when they\'re being fooled.

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[music]

00:32:55.000 --> 00:33:03.000
There\'re auctions every day

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for literary fiction. The real problem
with literary fiction is that as I say

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
you can overpay on the hopes that
something will happen and uh…

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that\'s very hard to predict.

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[sil.]

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We now have two people who have a daytime
TV show called Richard and Judy Finnigan.

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
Every week, uh… they choose a book,
which they ask the viewers to read

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
and which they discuss with a
celebrity guest and to be chosen

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
for this program now is far more important
for sales than to win the Booker prize or…

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or any other literary prize. Uh…
And it\'s in fact it\'s a guarantee

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that you become a bestseller. And last week me kicked off with
toast by Nigel Slater. Today, we\'re reviewing a lot of people

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regard as modern masterpiece, Star
of the Sea by Joseph O\'Connor.

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Well, we\'ll find out now what
Bob and Bonnie made of it.

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The show is very influential and if we choose a book instantly it is going
to be a bestseller. It\'s called the Richard and Judy effect in Britain.

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If you go on Richard and Judy to plug a book,
the next day its number one on Amazon Charts

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and it\'s always in the top ten,
so there is a lot of pressure

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on us from the publishers. The Managing Director of
Simon & Schuster which is quite sizable company

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told me if he could get two books
a year on Richard and Judy,

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his whole business would be underpinned. For example,
umm… Joseph O\'Connor wrote a book called Star of the Sea,

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which is in our first book club. Before we featured
it, it sold less than 3,000 copies worldwide

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and after it was on our show, now
it\'s topped nearly a million copies.

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The sales lift in the next week was 3,500%.

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[music]

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
Hi. Susan. Susan. Hi! Where are you from?

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
(inaudible). Ah! That
happens (inaudible). Ola!

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[music]

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[music]

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[music]

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[music]

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You don\'t get very much money

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for the film rights… Really! You might get (inaudible) well,
it depends what you mean by very much money. But I\'m…

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(inaudible) scale maybe, but usually it\'s a lot. I mean,
yeah, I\'m there\'s some big deals, but usually you…

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Usually you get maybe $0.5 million
or maybe a million dollars and umm…

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And then if of course if it\'s a big
budget movie, you sell a lot of books

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but most movies you don\'t
sell that many extra books.

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With one book come Innocent Blood, I burst
into as it were big international bestseller

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(inaudible) them with that it was number
one on the New York bestseller list

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and I sold the film rights and the
Paperback writer in one week,

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so at… By on Monday morning I
was comparatively successful

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and moderately well-off and by the
end of the week I was very well off.

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What I would have been if it
hadn\'t been for the tax man.

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He was very well off.

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[sil.]

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[music]

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The National Endowment for the
Arts does a comprehensive survey

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of American participation
in the arts every 10 years.

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And what we see is that reading is
declining among every group of Americans

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and we\'re now at… at in
America we\'re only about half

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of the adult population
reads, you know, literature

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and this is a turning point for American culture, it\'s
a… it\'s a crisis and so what we see in the United States

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and I think it would probably be very true in Western
Europe is that people that read or people that tend to

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manage their lives more actively and more
independently, people who don\'t read

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tend to be more passive, they come home, they
watch television, they go on the internet,

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they play video games and
so reading I… I think

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becomes if not the cause it becomes at least
the indicator of a healthy active lifestyle.

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The trouble now is that
it\'s not great books

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that are becoming bestsellers. When I was in college,
if I looked at the American bestseller list,

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there were terrific novels on it.
John Updike, Eudora Welty,

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Truman Capote, you know, a Posthumous novel
by Hemingway would be on the bestseller list.

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Now you can look at the top ten books on the
bestseller list and they\'re all popular fiction,

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they\'re detective stories, spy stories, science-fiction
novels. There\'s nothing wrong with popular fiction,

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but if it dominates the attention of society, I
think it impoverishing the cultural diversity

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and the cultural stature of society.

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So the question really is, you
know, why in the last 30-40 years

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has the bestseller list gotten lower
and lower on the literary scale,

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it\'s become a function of the entertainment industry
rather than the function of the art of literature.

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[music]

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[music]

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And what I do like and I think this
is probably true of all bestsellers

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that people write and say, the book has given
me such a pleasure years and years of pleasure.

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Well, not unfortunately gentleman said
to me when I was giving a lecture,

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\'You\'ve given me years of
pleasure in bath.\' Which I felt

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could have been better expressed.

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
But I mean books, they
should give pleasure.

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I\'m very pleased that I have all
these readers who love my stories

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and I don\'t want to disappoint them. So
if I wrote a book that they didn\'t like,

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yes, it would be a disaster for me.
I\'d be terribly upset about it.

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
I\'d be devastated. Uh… But it\'s not
because of what the publishers would say,

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
it\'s because that\'s me I want…
I would be like the comic

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who stands up in the nightclub and
tells a joke and nobody laughs. Ah!

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[music]

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As you go on and on and, as
you sign bigger contracts,

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as you are always on the bestseller list,

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you\'re going to start to get slammed.
And it\'s just the way it is

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between the two I would rather have my readers
enjoy my books than a critic enjoyed them.

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And some of them are very
kind and others are not good,

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but I think, honey, a
million copies were bought,

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so somebody liked it even if you didn\'t.

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[music]