Miha Kovač

Bestsellers 2008 to 2014: The last king of analogue and the first dame of the digital pleasure house

This paper looks at top bestselling authors as chosen by algorithms developed by Jodie Archer and Mathew Jockers and compares these authors with top authors in European bestseller charts in 2008–2015. Through these comparisons, the paper shows that, besides the bestselling narratives as analysed with Jockers and Archer’s algorithms, there is a set of non-textual mechanisms that influence the generation of bestsellers. These non-textual properties include the author’s personal background, mechanisms inherent to the book industry, and the book market’s broader cultural, linguistic, and social environment. This paper advocates a holistic approach combining research on bestselling narratives with research on bestsellers’ non-textual properties. Such an approach will bring better insights into the cultural logic of book markets and will have practical consequences for book marketing, since it will help publishers understand which books have bestselling potential and the reasons for their successes and failures.