The Author with 7 Books in the Top 10 NYTimes Best Seller's List
The Author with 7 Books in the Top 10 NYTimes Best Seller's List
Colleen Hoover
New York Times Article Review
By Alexandra Alter
Oct. 9, 2022
“How Colleen Hoover Rose to Rule the Best-Seller List”
“With legions of devoted fans and a knack for high-voltage emotional drama, Hoover has sold more than 20 million books. And she’s done it her way.”
Excerpt from “IT ENDS WITH US“ Colleen Hoover:
“…What brought you to Boston?”
“My residency. And my sister lives here.” He taps his foot and says, “Right beneath us, actually. Married a tech-savvy Bostonian and they bought the entire top floor.”
I look down. “The entire top floor?”
He nods. “Lucky bastard works from home. Doesn’t even have to change out of his pajamas and makes seven figures a year.”
Lucky bastard, indeed.
“What kind of residency? Are you a doctor?”
He nods. “Neurosurgeon. Less than a year left of my residency and then it’s official.”
Stylish, well spoken, and smart. And smokes pot. If this were an SAT question, I would ask which one didn’t belong.
“Should doctors be smoking weed?”
He smirks. “Probably not. But if we didn’t indulge on occasion, there would be a lot more of us taking the leap over these ledges, I can promise you that.”
He’s facing forward again with his chin resting on his arms. His eyes are closed now, like he’s enjoying the wind against his face. He doesn’t look as intimidating like this.
“You want to know something that only the locals know?”
“Of course,” he says, bringing his attention back to me.
I point to the east. “See that building? The one with the green roof?”
He nods.
“There’s a building behind it on Melcher. There’s a house on top of the
building. Like a legit house, built right on the rooftop. You can’t see it from the street, and the building is so tall that not many people even know about it.”He looks impressed. “Really?”
I nod. “I saw it when I was searching Google Earth, so I looked it up. Apparently a permit was granted for the construction in 1982. How cool would that be? To live in a house on top of a building?”
“You’d get the whole roof to yourself,” he says.
I hadn’t thought of that. If I owned it I could plant gardens up there. I’d have an outlet.
“Who lives there?” he asks.
“No one really knows. It’s one of the great mysteries of Boston.”
He laughs and then looks at me inquisitively. “What’s another great mystery of Boston?”
“Your name.” As soon as I say it, I slap my hand against my forehead. It sounded so much like a cheesy pickup line; the only thing I can do is laugh at myself.He smiles. “It’s Ryle,” he says. “Ryle Kincaid.”
I sigh, sinking into myself. “That’s a really great name.”
“Why do you sound sad about it?”
“Because, I’d give anything for a great name.”
“You don’t like the name Lily?…”
“It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover
Her top-selling book, “It Ends With Us,” a drama about a florist who falls for a brooding, abusive neurosurgeon, came out six years ago, but reappeared on the best-seller list in 2021 and has remained a fixture there: It's currently No. 1 on The New York Times paperback list and has sold four million copies.
The New York Times article starts:
Colleen Hoover has sold more books this year than Dr. Seuss. She’s sold more books than James Patterson and John Grisham — combined.
To say she’s currently the best-selling novelist in the United States, to even compare her to other successful authors who have landed several books on the best seller lists, fails to capture the size and loyalty of her audience.
She holds seven of the top 10 spots on The New York Times’s paperback fiction best-seller list, a stunning number of simultaneous best sellers from a single author.
She has sold 8.6 million print books this year alone — more copies than the Bible, according to NPD BookScan.
Colleen has 1.1 million followers on TikTok, where the #ColleenHoover hashtag has had more than 2.4 billion views.
Look at the top 10 Paperback Trade Fiction books on the NYTimes list. https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/trade-fiction-paperback/
This week’s Best Sellers:
I can’t say that I am a book-a-holic, or a fan of any fiction really, but my wife is always reading James Patterson, Stuart Woods, Michael Connelly and so on. Still, neither of us had ever heard of Colleen Hoover before reading this NY Times article: (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/books/colleen-hoover.html)
Colleen Hoover is a novelist who started by writing in the Young Adult category just 10 years ago. Her first book was titled “Slammed“.
She is eclectic. Styles of her writing include romances, sexy thrillers, a ghost story, young adult, novels about abuse, and poverty. She says she wants to “brand“ herself as “Colleen Hoover“, instead of being wedged into a specific writing style.
Her fans call her CoHo and refer to themselves as CoHorts. And her popularity has skyrocketed in the last few months.
Why do people like these books?
People say the characters are relatable, honest, real and genuine. She uses regular people and puts them in difficult and steamy situations. In fact, there seems to be a lot of sexy stuff.
She doesn’t use big words. All her novels are between 80,000 and 110,000 words. So they are easy to read. Obviously the writing moves the reader forward to the next part.
My wife really likes James Patterson’s short chapters. His chapter word count is around 600 words. The average for fiction books is around 2,500 words per chapter. Total word count for the typical Patterson book is 70,000 words.
By contrast, the book “It Ends With Us“ is 385 pages, has 35 chapters with an average of 3,200 words / chapter. The book has approximately 115,000 words.
There have been a lot of articles in the last week or so about Colleen and her books. Here are a few of the articles to learn more about this phenom:
Oh, and Colleen has imposter syndrome, just like most of us: https://fortune.com/2022/10/11/author-colleen-hoover-deals-with-imposter-syndrome/
Despite 1.1 million TikTok followers and 20 million books sold, bestselling author Colleen Hoover says she has ‘the worst case of impostor syndrome’
10 Best Colleen Hoover Books Ranked, According To Goodreads
‘Never seen anything like it’: how Colleen Hoover’s normcore thrillers made her America’s bestselling author
Why We Can’t Stop Reading Colleen Hoover’s Trauma-Filled Novels
Who in the World Is Colleen Hoover? Meet the Author Dominating the Bestseller List
Colleen Hoover is queen of the best sellers list. Who is she and why are her books so popular?
Twitter: https://twitter.com/colleenhoover :
It’s interesting to see what books and authors are popular.. Have you heard of Colleen before?
Thanks for reading. Peace!
Wow what a wild world I’ve never heard of her either. What’s the point of having 7 NYT best sellers at once if no one has heard of you? I’m going back to bed.
I have never heard of Colleen before. I used to read a lot of books. I like James Patterson's NYPD Red series. It's good to know how many words James Patterson's books are. I always wondered how I could find that out. Several years back, I started writing some fiction and the highest word count I'm at so far is 50,000. It's funny you would list your wife likes Stuart Woods. I read 49 of his books before he ticked me off. In one of his books, he listed my hometown in the story. Seeing as it was an area which I thought no one knew existed, I was curious how he knew about it. I sent him an email and he sent back a snarky response. From that day forward, I never read his books + they just seemed to be getting out there and not what would happen in real life.