How to make a bestseller: insiders reveal the tricks of the book trade

booksAug 29, 2026656

The Guardian reports that publishers, booksellers and supermarket stock buyers use design, merchandising and influencer partnerships to steer book sales this autumn. Longtime publisher-turned-agent Philip Gwyn Jones calls the process “the art of persuasion,” while designer Jamie Keenan says covers are tested with focus groups and shown to supermarket and chain buyers whose preferences can prompt last-minute changes. Publishers now favour simple, iconic covers with bright colours and big type to read as thumbnails on apps and websites, a move credited with producing jewel-toned, highly saturated paperback displays in stores. Copywriters then craft back-cover descriptions to hold readers’ attention once a cover persuades them to pick up a book. The piece documents increasing copycatting, publishers brief designers to echo successful comparable titles, and gives the example that Japanese fiction was often marketed with cats on the cover because buyers believed it helped sales. The article adds that influence also comes from BookTok creators, podcasts and Instagram posts, and that booksellers’ hand-selling remains a prized tactic for getting titles into readers’ hands.

John Self

@john-self.bsky.social

F-shaped blurbs, seducing chatbots, nicking quotes off GoodReads and paying BookTokers: in today's Guardian I investigated the book world's tricks of the trade.

321h ago

John Self5

If you subscribe to the Guardian's Inside Saturday newsletter, there are bits in that I didn't have room for, eg the crime blurb writer who was told by the publisher he had to mention a murder (even though it didn't happen until the end and spoiled the plot) because "we need to sell 300,000 copies".

Longbarrow Press2

A fine piece about a depressing state of affairs. Amused to read this, towards the end of the feature: "What came across time and again from the people I spoke to is how authenticity is key."

Marie Le Conte2

oh I'm going to hate reading this I can tell, thank you

David Lewis2

I love your pieces about the industry and yet they invariably fill me with hopeless despair.

The Guardian

@theguardian.com

How to make a bestseller: insiders reveal the tricks of the book trade

191h ago

Quoting this

Steven Seggie2

Write a book that loads of people buy?

Peter Ross

@peteralanross.bsky.social

An interesting piece on the business of selling books. "Hand-selling", when a bookseller makes a recommendation to a customer, is something I value hugely. It's an honour that there are people out there, in the shops, talking about my work to their customers. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

41h ago

Louise Fairbairn

@scarletrix.bsky.social

Lots here the general public is likely to be unaware of. Outwith reading for prizes, I buy books by authors I already love, and after I can be swayed by a review or recommendation by a friend or blogger I trust and I know has similar taste to me. #BookSky 📚💙 www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

1h ago

Alex DiFrancesco

@alessandrostardust.bsky.social

For the record, I have NO ISSUE with people who say, "I can help you write the best book you possibly can, but that's it!" My qualms come in when people pretend they can make you a bestseller, or even show you how to get a huge book deal. They can't, trust me! And most of them have middling sales!

1Yesterday

Graeme Swanson

@swansonian.bsky.social

This is very interesting. Recently I had several horror book recommendations appear in my instagram algorithm and it’s always the same books and three of them look suspiciously cheap by writers I’ve never heard of. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

1h ago

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How to make a bestseller: insiders reveal the tricks of the book trade

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