In our Cambridge Element, The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business (2020), we theorised buzz as existing in “hard” and “soft” forms. Hard buzz, we argued, occurs in market-ready reports in the mainstream media. Soft buzz, on the other hand, exists in the form of partial, lived experience, frequently generated at convivial events. Movement between these two buzz states - for example...
The Age of the Influencer has had a significant impact on the publishing industry, from the ubiquity of Bookstagram and BookTok, to celebrity book stylists and influencer book deals. The influencer book deal has become an established phenomenon, often accompanied by handsome advances and elaborate publicity campaigns. However, as Julie McCarron and Michele Matrisciani point out in the...
What makes a memoir move across languages and markets? More particularly, how does an English-language memoir become a bestseller in the German market? In this presentation we begin to parse out the different roles played by publishers and readers in producing bestselling memoirs in Germany by focussing on some recent high-volume sellers. Some, like Prince Harry’s Spare (Random House 2023) and...