160: 8 Million Copies

Stories Are Soul Food

After a quick discussion of Brian's decision to shout more at Nate to please a few vocal liseners, the SASF guys discuss what it takes to sell more than 8 million copies of your books. Turns out, if you published in the 2010s, putting "Girl" in the title pretty much did it. If you follow publishing, you should be able to guess the books that sold the most copies in the 2010s: EL James's 50 Shades series (the trilogy sold 35 million copies). Nate and Brian discuss the crisis that publishing such successful smut caused Random House -- and how RH made it go away. They also introduce you to Doug Wilson's reviews of Twilight and 50 Shades. Then they move on to identifying the expertise required to sell what fills out the rest of the top 10 list for the previous decade in this books-focused episode of Stories Are Soul Food. Includes discussions of Hunger Games, The Help, Gone Girl on a Train with Tattoos, Divergent, and more, all of which sold about 8 million copies or more.