Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction
After reading John Sutherland’s Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press [2007], 127 pp.), I really did feel like I had a better sense of bestsellers: key names, characteristics, where they came from and where they are probably going. Everybody is familiar with bestsellers, of course, and has probably read a few. This book takes a closer look at this (rather recent) phenomenon, both from a book industry perspective and from a (quote-unquote) literary perspective. Sutherland’s book offers a wide take on bestsellers (common traits, audience expectations, market strategies that propelled them) as well as a more detailed, nearly decade-by-decade account of American and British bestsellers. These types of chapters read very differently, moving from a more structural to a chronological point of view. In fact, it seemed that these were two different books compacted uncomfortably into a single introduction. Having said that, interesting ideas and witticisms dot the en...