7
We charged in the third count of our indictment that books are rather frequently advertised in the wrong places. We had in mind the principle that for every book considerable enough to get itself published by a publisher of standing there is, somewhere, a particular audience; just as there is a certain body of readers for every news item of enough moment to get printed in a daily newspaper. A juster way of expressing the trouble would be this: Books are rather frequently not advertised in the right places.
The clues to the right places must be sought in the book itself and its authorship, always; and they are innumerable. As no two books are alike the best thing to do will be to take a specific example. Harry Lauder’s A Minstrel in France will serve.
The first and most obvious thing to do is to advertise it in every vaudeville theatre in America. Wherever the programme includes motion pictures flash the advertisement on the screen with a fifteen second movie of Lauder himself. Posters and circulars in the lobby must serve if there are no screen pictures.
The next and almost equally obvious thing is to have Lauder make a phonograph record of some particularly effective passage in the book, marketing the record in the usual way, at a popular price. Newspaper and magazine advertising must be used heavily and must be distributed on the basis of circulation almost entirely.
8
The external factor in the success of the best seller is so undeveloped and so rich in possibilities that one takes leave of it with regret; but we must go on to some consideration of the internal factor that makes for big sales—the quality or qualities in the book itself.
Without going into a long and elaborate investigation of best-seller books, sifting and reasoning until we reach rock bottom, we had better put down a few dogmas. These, then, are the essentials of best-selling fiction so far as our observation and intellect has carried us:
1. A good story; which means, as a rule, plenty of surface action but always means a crisis in the affairs of one or two most-likable characters, a crisis that is satisfactorily solved.