A Look Outside the Cave
An author writing can be a bit like the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, where people who have been imprisoned since birth inside a dark cavern see shadows on the cavern walls and think the shadows are actual things. The writer writes a book expecting that people will want to read it, but what’s the basis for thinking that will happen? We are all exposed to books, movies and TV and we can’t avoid being influenced by them – inasmuch as our writing is unique, we also want to in some way echo the things we see that are popular. But, what if those things are actually shadows? Could it be there are “real” things that underly why certain books are successful? How can I know my book is something many people will want to read?
I’ve been mulling this question for a few weeks. I’m afraid I have no answers – I’d be an instant best seller otherwise 
– but I have gathered some interesting data points.
What Does Success Look Like?
Who are the most successful science fiction writers? What are their books like? I’ll start with some obvious examples …
Andy Weir
Here’s a Horatio Alger author story if ever there was one: Unknown writer serializes a book on their blog, some people like it, then in 2014 the author self-publishes The Martian on Amazon at $0.99. In a few months it sells 35,000 copies, a traditional publisher picks it up, and now it has sold over 5 million, and was made into a movie starring Matt Damon. Weir’s 2021 book, Project Hail Mary, has sold 2 million copies and is also a movie, starring Ryan Gosling.
I haven’t read any of his books, but I have seen the movie of The Martian, and between that and Google here’s my sense on why people like Weir’s stuff:
- He uses a combination of real science and dramatic problems that get us invested in what is going on. When the main character of The Martian Mark Watney is faced with starvation all alone on Mars, he MacGyvers his way to a solution to create pressure and water for growing potatoes and finally fertilizes the crop with his own poop. This is called competency porn and American audiences in particular love it, as in movies like Apollo 13 or TV shows like The Pitt. (BTW, the real science is that the plucky Mr. Watney could never in reality have survived, due to the high levels of radiation on Mars and due to perchlorates in the soil that would make growing food impossible.)
- His main characters are witty and relatable. They are educated and intelligent, but clearly not members of the “elite”. They use sarcasm, self-deprecating wit, and ultimately have hearts-of-gold.
- The stories are exciting, with a lot of action and little to no digression into deep themes.
Martha Wells
Marth Wells has authored 35-some novels, across multiple genres: Sci Fi, Fantasy, YA, Adult, as well as stories set in the Star Wars and Stargate universes. Her most recent works, The Murderbot Diaries, have sold over 1 million copies, and is a TV series starring Alexander Skarsgård. What typifies her writing?
- Rich and nuanced characters. Murderbot is a socially anxious killing machine who takes solace in binge watching SF soap operas. Moon (from The Books of the Raksura) is an orphan from a shapeshifting, flying lizard-lion-bee species, who struggles to find his place in a new, complex society.
- Worldbuilding. Wells has a BA in anthropology, and this comes through in the diverse societies she creates. Those lizard-lion-bee aliens are bisexual and polyamorous, and live in a matriarchal society.
- “Cozy” atmosphere. Like cozy mysteries, Wells’ books can be comforting reads and despite some tense action generally have optimistic tones.
John Scalzi
John Scalzi started his paid writing career in 1997 with a “shareware” release of Agent to the Stars – readers could pay him whatever they felt was fair. His first “real” book was Old Man’s War (Tor, 2005) – Scalzi himself described it as ”Starship Troopers with old people.” This book has been an enduring success, selling 5000-7000 copies a year for 20 years. OMW started a series, now with 7 books. His biography has 27 novels total, comprising 5 series and several standalones. Scalzi estimates his career sales are over 4 million copies. What common traits/qualities do I discern across his catalog?
- New twists on old tropes. As I mentioned Old Man’s War was a fresh take on military SF, a somewhat hidebound sub-genre. A more recent work, Starter Villain, is a twist on James Bond-esque super-villain thrillers.
- Accessible style, conversational with lots of dialog, fast pace and minimalist descriptions.
- Relevant themes. His book Lock In, and the follow-on Head On portray a world where a disease causes peoples’ bodies and senses to go “dead” while their brains remain healthy; the consciousness of such people is therefore “locked in” the shell of their body. In this work, which is a police procedural style story, Scalzi explores the themes of awareness and being.
Less Obvious Examples
Weir, Wells and Scalzi are so well-known, outside science fiction as well as in, that it’s fair to say they have become franchises – any new work these writers come out with will be successful. That’s not to say they have guaranteed permanent success – I’d offer Orson Scott Card as an example of a franchise author who’s star has dimmed.
What about their writing attributes? It seems to me the things these 3 authors do are too general to add up to a success formula. It’s all well and good to have relatable characters, fast-paced plots, fresh looks at old ideas, all sprinkled with nuanced worldbuilding and the occasional deep thought. But you might as well just say, Write better books.
Anyway for an author trying to break into the business, emulating big names like my three examples would never be a practical strategy. A book taking off the like The Martian requires a lot of luck in addition to having a high-quality, readable product. What other data is out there we might look at to get a handle on this question?
Instead of looking at authors we can look at categories. The de facto taxonomy for book categories is Amazon (sigh) and that’s where the numbers below come from. The book I’m currently submitting to agents, FORLORN TOYS, is a Science Fiction Adventure book. Here’s the top bestsellers in that category, together with their blurbs:
#1 Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
A lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this incredible new science-based thriller from the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Martian.
#2, 5, 6, 7, 8 Red Rising Series, Pierce Brown
Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet.
#3 Operation Bounce House, Matt Dinniman
All colonist Oliver Lewis ever wanted to do was run the family ranch with his sister, maybe play a gig or two with his band, and keep his family’s aging fleet of intelligent agriculture bots ticking as long as possible. He figures it will be a good thing when the transfer gate finally opens all the way and restores instant travel and full communication between Earth and his planet, New Sonora. But there’s a complication.
Even though the settlers were promised they’d be left in peace, Earth’s government now has other plans. The colossal Apex Industries is hired to commence an “eviction action.” But maximizing profits will always be Apex’s number one priority. Why spend money printing and deploying AI soldiers when they can turn it into a game? Why not charge bored Earthers for the opportunity to design their own war machines and remotely pilot them from the comfort of their homes?
The game is called Operation Bounce House.
#4 A Parade of Horribles: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 8, Matt Dinniman
As chaos and mass panic spread outside the dungeon in the wake of Faction Wars, Carl and Donut find themselves on the tenth floor, where they’re forced to compete in a surprisingly normal set of tasks. Well, normal for the dungeon.
Races. Get from point A to point B, and don’t come in last. After each race, they pick an upgrade for their vehicle and the track gets more challenging. It all seems a little too normal, a little too simple.
Ignore those strange glitches that are occurring with increasing frequency. Don’t listen to those whispers about what’s happening on the mysterious eleventh floor, something the system AI calls A Parade of Horribles. Nobody, not even the showrunners, knows what that means. Just that the AI has ominously dubbed it “a coming-out party for the ages.”
Everything is fine, Crawler. I repeat, everything is fine.
Carl hates that it’s business as usual. The rules of this floor have taken away his agency. That just will not do.
So Carl is planning a party of his own. It’s a plan so dangerous, so insane, he can’t even consult his friends lest the AI put a stop to it. Because if it goes wrong, it’s not just the end of Carl and Donut. No. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.
I’ll stop there. Andy Weir I already spoke about. The Red Rising books, by Pierce Brown, seem to be in the more modest bestseller class. Without digging too deeply, my sense is its success comes from the dystopian premise – a slave caste of laborers working below ground on Mars – and from its quick pacing. Everything else I see about it suggests the writing is not the best. One reviewer put it this way:
It is a mishmash of The Hunger Games, Dune and Game of Thrones. But instead of being a respectful nod, it seems more like a poor imitation. The romance in The Hunger Games seems quite real. The romance in Red Rising seems childish. Frank Herbert reveals keen insights about the nature of power, how the pathologically corrupt seek absolute power, how religion is the most powerful force in human history, how even people with the noblest intentions lose their way once they become powerful. This book has the shallow ideas of an immature teenager about what attracts people to power. If the author has deeper insights, he did a superb job of keeping them from the reader.
But that’s nothing compared to #3 and #4 on the list, written by Matt Dinniman. The Dungeon Crawler Carl series is LitRPG, a genre that blends role playing game elements, like hit points, dice rolls, etc. into the story’s action and plot – a LitRPG story is like a recording of a gaming session, just with more purple prose. I’ve skimmed the samples from Amazon … thirteen-year-old me probably would have liked it, but present-day me could not endure a single paragraph. Yet the DCC books have more than 50,000 reviews on Amazon.
Don’t get me wrong in my comments on writing quality. Millions of Americans eat fast food every day. Why should books be any different? Sometimes you’re in the mood for One Hundred Years of Solitude, other times you want to read one of the Destroyer series.
My takeaway is these lists don’t help much, they are dominated by known A-list authors, or, like Dungeon Crawler Carl, by unique, one-off books that have no lessons to offer on what sells, in a practical sense.
What’s A Cave Dweller To Do?
I admit I had a bit of an expectation that there would be an algorithmic answer to the question of what will readers want to read – 35+ years of software engineering will do that to you. But looking at best-selling authors doesn’t give any such formula, nor does looking at best-sellers in a single category.
Here’s the best I can do: There’s an apocryphal story about an author and an agent, that goes like this:
Author: What should I do for my next book? I want to write something that sells.
Agent: Write a new book same as the last book.
Author: The same?
Agent: Yeah, the same – but different.
Readers want the conventions of their genres respected: Mysteries must have murders and detectives; Romances must have happily-ever-afters; and Science Fiction must have the future, unexpected consequences, strange discoveries and new worlds. And certain readers also want certain styles of writing: Sometimes it’s brutal and hard-boiled; or it’s cozy and charming; or it’s shocking, tense and fast-moving; or it might be epic.
All that is the “same” part. What can be different is how you combine those things, and how you envision the details. There’s many Sci-Fi books that feature planetary peril. There’s also a lot of S-F that features detailed problem solving. And it’s becoming common across many genres to have an ensemble of characters, with the point of view moving from character to character. Well, how about a book that combines all three of those things? That’s the short description of FORLORN TOYS.
Will this combination be distinctive enough for the book to grab an agent’s attention? Time will tell.
Till next time …