Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-11T14:49:34.004Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Space, Place, and Bestsellers

Moving Books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2024

Lisa Fletcher
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
Elizabeth Leane
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania

Summary

From airport bookstores to deckchairs, as audiobooks downloaded by commuters, and on Kindles and other portable devices, twenty-first century bestsellers move in old and new ways. This Element examines the locations and mobilities of the contemporary bestseller as a multi-format commercial object. It employs paratextual, textual, and site-based analysis of the spatiality of bestsellers and considers the centrality of geography to the commercial promise of these books. Space, Place, and Bestsellers provides analysis of the spatial logic of bestseller lists, evidence-rich accounts of the physical and digital retail sites through which bestsellers flow, and new interpretations of how affixing the label 'bestseller' individual authors and titles generates industrial, social, and textual effects. Through its multi-layered analysis, this Element offers a new model for studying the spatiality of popular fiction.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781108769167
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 13 June 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Aaronovitch, B. (2011). Rivers of London. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
About. Dymocks Books and Gifts, www.dymocks.com.au/about.Google Scholar
About Fullers Bookshop. Fullers Bookshop, www.fullersbookshop.com.au/.Google Scholar
About Us. Petrarch’s Bookshop, www.petrarchs.com.au/about-us.Google Scholar
Alter, A. (2013). Sci-fi’s underground hit. The Wall Street Journal, 14 March, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324678604578340752088305668.Google Scholar
Babel. (2023). Title Key, 29 September, https://e.hc.com/book/9780063021440.Google Scholar
Barber, R. (2017). Lee Child: The man who’s sold 100 million books. Stuff, 5 April, www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/91106765/lee-child-the-man-whos-sold-100-million-books.Google Scholar
Barrett, K. (2021). Your Fall 2021 Book Horoscope. Medium.com, 29 August, https://medium.com/from-the-library/your-fall-2021-book-horoscope-dfdaecd20b1c.Google Scholar
Bathurst, R. & Crystall, A. (2019). Attending Night School: Leadership lessons at the Jack Reacher academy. Journal of Management and Organization, 25(3), 430–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baverstock, A., Bradford, R., & Gonzalez, M., eds. (2020). Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, S. (2022). Jack Reacher beats Harry Potter as Amazon reveals bestselling book series. The Bookseller, 23 June, www.thebookseller.com/news/jack-reacher-beats-harry-potter-as-amazon-reveals-bestselling-book-series.Google Scholar
Blakesley, E. (2014). Lee Child’s pure, uncomplicated hero. In Hoppenstand, G., ed., Critical Insights: The American Thriller. Ipswich: Salem Press, pp. 8898.Google Scholar
Borsuk, A. (2018). The Book. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowker, E. & Somerville, C. (2020). Sun treasure: Can the traditional public library service survive in contemporary Britain? In Baverstock, A., Bradford, R. and Gonzalez, M., eds., Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books. London: Routledge, pp. 7795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, S., ed. (2006). Consuming Books: The Marketing and Consumption of Literature. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlick, S. (2022). Emily Jenry and Erin Morgenstern: How TikTok changed authors’ careers. Penguin, 9 August, www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2022/08/emily-henry-and-erin-morgenstern-how-tiktok-changed-our-careers.Google Scholar
Carter, D. (2016). Beyond the Antipodes: Australian popular fiction in transnational networks. In Gelder, K., ed., New Directions in Popular Fiction: Genre, Distribution, Reproduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 349–70.Google Scholar
Casanova, P. (2004). The World Republic of Letters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cattanach, T. & La Marca, S. (2021). Shelftalkers: Empowering student voice, Synergy, 19(2), 17, www.slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/527/520.Google Scholar
Chalke, B. (2022). The Hobart Bookshop, personal interview with Elizabeth Leane (8 September).Google Scholar
Child, L. (2010). 61 Hours. London: Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2013). A Wanted Man, Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Bad Luck and Trouble, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2019). Blue Moon, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Die Trying, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2011). Echo Burning, Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Echo Burning, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2009). Gone Tomorrow, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2019). The Hero, TLS Books.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2015). Make Me, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Nothing to Lose, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2009). One Shot, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2019). Past Tense, Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2014). Personal, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Persuader, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2011). The Affair, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2005). The Enemy, Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2009). The Enemy, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). The Hard Way, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2009). The Killing Floor, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2017). The Midnight Line, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2023). The Secret, Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). The Visitor, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Tripwire, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2008). Without Fail, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2010). Worth Dying For, Bantam.Google Scholar
Child, L. (2010). Worth Dying For, Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L., & Child, A. (2021). Better Off Dead. Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Child, L., & Child, A. (2022). No Plan B. Transworld Digital.Google Scholar
Clark, G. & Phillips, A. (2020). Inside Book Publishing, 6th ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Compton, C. (2020). Show us your shelf talkers. Shelf Talker – Publishers Weekly, 10 February, http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/shelftalker/?p=32392.Google Scholar
Crane, R. & Fletcher, L. (2017). The proximity of islands: Dirk Pitt’s insular adventures. In Crane, R. and Fletcher, L., eds., Island Genres, Genre Islands: Conceptualisation and Representation in Popular Fiction. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 7184.Google Scholar
D’Alessandro, A. (2022). ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ author Matt Dinniman inks with WME. Deadline, 26 October, https://deadline.com/2022/10/dungeon-crawler-carl-author-matt-dinniman-wme-1235155412/.Google Scholar
Dietz, L. (2015). Who are you calling an author? Changing definitions of career legitimacy for novelists in the digital era. In Davidson, G. and Evans, N., eds., Literary Careers in the Modern Era. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 196214.Google Scholar
Donohue, K. (2013). Underground hit puts sci-fi in a new light. The Washington Post, 12 March, p. C1.Google Scholar
Doyle, A. C. (1981). A Study in Scarlet. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Driscoll, B. (2019). The rise of the microgenre. The University of Melbourne: Pursuit, 13 May, https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-rise-of-the-microgenre.Google Scholar
Driscoll, B. & Rehberg Sedo, D. (2020). The transnational reception of bestselling books between Canada and Australia. Global Media and Communication, 16(2), 243–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driscoll, B. & Squires, C. (2020). The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drivers of Tasmania’s Future Population Health Needs. (2020). Department of Health (Tasmania), www.health.tas.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-06/Drivers%20of%20Tasmania%27s%20Future%20Population%20Health%20Needs_0.pdf.Google Scholar
50 words or fewer: The art of writing shelf talkers. (2010). American Booksellers Association, 7 April, www.bookweb.org/news/50-words-or-fewer-art-writing-shelf-talkers.Google Scholar
Durkin, A. (2022). Petrarch’s Bookshop, personal interview with Lisa Fletcher (5 September).Google Scholar
Fletcher, L., McAlister, J., Temple, K., & Williams, K. (2019). #loveyourshelfie: Mills & Boon books and how to find them/ #loveyourshelfie: Mills & Boon books et comment les trouver. Mémoires du livre/Studies in Book Culture, 11(1), 133, www.erudit.org/en/journals/memoires/2019-v11-n1-memoires05099/1066945ar/.Google Scholar
Frost, S. (2017). Readers and retail literature: Findings from a UK public high street survey of purchasers’ expectations from books. Logos, 28(2), 2743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, D. (2004). Writing the Everyday: Women’s Textual Communities in Atlantic Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, D. & Rehberg Sedo, D. (2023). Reading Bestsellers and the Multimodal Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gee, J. P. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces. In Barton, D. and Tusting, K., eds., Beyond Communities of Practice: Language, Power and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 225–29.Google Scholar
Gelder, K. (2004). Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glover, D. & McCracken, S. (2012). Introduction. In Glover, and McCracken, , eds., The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gott, T. (2022). Devonport Bookshop, personal interview with Lisa Fletcher (8 September).Google Scholar
Grey, J. (2010). Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Gregoriou, C. (2007). Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayot, E. (2021). Video games and the novel. Daedalus, 150, 178-187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazelwood, A. (2021). The Love Hypothesis. New York: Jove.Google Scholar
Henry, E. (2022). Book Lovers. Dublin: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Hermes, J. (2000). Of irritation, texts and men: Feminist audience studies and cultural citizenship. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(3), 351367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, P. (2022). Jack Reacher’s carbon footprint: Reading airport novels irresponsibly. Literary Geographies, 8(1), 1944.Google Scholar
Humanities showcase: Celebrating a string of successes. (2022). University of Tasmania: News and Stories, www.utas.edu.au/?a=1593645.Google Scholar
Jack Reacher author Lee Child passes writing baton to brother. (2020). BBC News, 18 January, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51162838.Google Scholar
Jack Reacher Series. Penguin Random House, www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/JAC/jack-reacher/.Google Scholar
Jack Reacher: UK. Penguin Random House, www.jackreacher.com/uk/.Google Scholar
Jack Reacher: US. Penguin Random House, www.jackreacher.com/us/.Google Scholar
Jansen, A. M. Y. (2021). The most bookish cities in the world. Book Riot, 2 July, https://bookriot.com/bookish-cities/.Google Scholar
Jarvis, T. (2022). Fullers Bookshop, personal interview with Elizabeth Leane (17 November).Google Scholar
Jones, S. E. (2014). The Emergence of the Digital Humanities. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Katsoulis, M. (2013). Literary preview of 2013. The Telegraph, 2 January, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9756380/Literary-preview-of-2013.html.Google Scholar
Kuang, R. F. (2022). Babel or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. London: HarperVoyager.Google Scholar
Kuang, R. F. (2023). Amazon Australia, 29 September, www.amazon.com.au/R-F-Kuang/e/B0788VXRHP/ref=aufs_dp_mata_dsk.Google Scholar
Laing, A. & Royle, J. (2013). Examining chain bookstores in the context of ‘third place’. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 41(1), 2744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latimer, E. (2021). Home and home-less: Narrating and negating the domestic in contemporary crime fiction series. Clues, 39(1), 7285.Google Scholar
Lee Child and Suzanne Collins surpass one million Kindle books sold. (2011). Business Wire, 6 June, www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110606005670/en/Lee-Child-and-Suzanne-Collins-Surpass-One-Million-Kindle-Books-Sold.Google Scholar
Li, J. (2010). Choosing the right battles: How independent bookshops in Sydney, Australia, compete with chains and online retailers. Australian Geographer, 41(2), 247262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luyt, B. & Heok, A. (2015). David and Goliath: Tales of independent bookstores in Singapore. Publishing Research Quarterly, 31, 122–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macquarie University and the Australia Council for the Arts. (2016). Reading the reader: A survey of Australian reading habits. Australia Council, https://australiacouncil.gov.au/advocacy-and-research/reading-the-reader/.Google Scholar
Magner, B. (2014). Shantaram: Portrait of an Australian bestseller. Antipodes, 28(1), 213–25.Google Scholar
Martin, A. (2015). Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Martin, A. (2019). With Child: Lee Child and the Readers of Jack Reacher. Cambridge, MA: Polity.Google Scholar
McGurl, M. (2021). Everything and Less: Fiction in the Age of Amazon. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Meyer, S. (2008). Twilight, Special ed. London: Atom.Google Scholar
Miller, L. J. (2007). Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, L. (2009). Fairy tales and thrillers: The contradictions of formula narratives. Literary Imagination, 11(3), 278–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moody, J. (2018). 100 million copies sold, a sale every NINE seconds and 61 weeks at No. 1: The remarkable stats behind the Jack Reacher series. Mirror, 3 April, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/100-million-copies-sale-every-12259882.Google Scholar
Murray, S. (2006). Publishing studies: Critically mapping research in search of a discipline. Publishing Research Quarterly, 22(4), 325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, S. (2018). The Digital Literary Sphere: Reading, Writing and Selling Books in the Internet Era. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muse, E. J. (2022). Fantasies of the Bookstore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nanquette, L. (2017). The global circulation of an Iranian bestseller. Interventions, 19(1), 5672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National, state and territory population. (2024). Department of Treasury and Finance Tasmania, https://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/Documents/Population.pdf.Google Scholar
Noorda, R. & Marsden, S. (2019). Twenty-first century book studies: The state of the discipline. Book History, 22(1), 370–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Brien, G. M. T. (2017). Small and slow is beautiful: Well-being, ‘socially connective retail’ and the independent bookshop. Social & Cultural Geography, 18(4), 573–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quixotic Books. Quixotic Books, www.quixoticbooks.com.au/.Google Scholar
Okenyo, A. (2022). Black Swan Bookshop, personal interview with Elizabeth Leane (21 October 2022).Google Scholar
Robinson, B. (2019). Thriller writer Lee Child’s inside scoop about his billion-dollar brand: Jack Reacher. Forbes, 27 September, www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2019/09/27/thriller-writer-lee-childs-inside-scoop-about-his-billion-dollar-brand-jack-reacher/.Google Scholar
Salamanca’s independent bookshop. The Hobart Bookshop, https://www.hobartbookshop.com.au/page/about.Google Scholar
Semel, P. (2021). Exclusive interview: ‘He Who Fights with Monsters: Book Two’ author Shirtaloon. 15 July, https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-he-who-fights-with-monsters-book-two-author-shirtaloon/.Google Scholar
Shirtaloon: He Who Fights with Monsters - Chapter 1: Strange business. Royal Road, www.royalroad.com/fiction/26294/he-who-fights-with-monsters/chapter/386590/chapter-1-strange-business.Google Scholar
Snapshot of Tasmania: High level summary data for Tasmania in 2021. (2022). Australian Bureau of Statistics, 28 June, www.abs.gov.au/articles/snapshot-tas-2021.Google Scholar
So then there was a bookshop. Quixotic Books, www.quixoticbooks.com.au/about.Google Scholar
Squires, C. (2007). Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Literature in Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squires, C. (2016). Book marketing and the Booker Prize. In Moody, N. and Matthews, N., eds., Judging a Book by Its Cover: Fans, Publishers, Designers, and the Marketing of Fiction. Milton Park: Routledge, pp. 7182.Google Scholar
Steiner, A. (2017). Select, display, and sell: Curation practices in the bookshop. Logos, 28(4), 1831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tasmania’s Top 10s of 2022. Libraries Tasmania, https://libraries.tas.gov.au/news/top10sof2022/.Google Scholar
The home of web fiction. Royal Road, www.royalroad.com/welcome.Google Scholar
The Tasmania Project. University of Tasmania: Community and Partners. www.utas.edu.au/community-and-partners/the-tasmania-project.Google Scholar
Thompson, J. B. (2021). Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing. London: Polity.Google Scholar
Touma, R. (2022). Babel: The BookTok sensation that melds dark academia with a post-colonial critique. The Guardian, 8 September, www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/08/babel-the-booktok-sensation-that-melds-dark-academia-with-a-post-colonial-critique.Google Scholar
Trager Bohley, K. (2010). The bookstore war on Orchard Road: A study of contemporary sponsors of literacy and ideologies of globalised book retailing in Singapore. Asian Journal of Communication, 20(1), 104123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treasure, R. (2015). Cleanskin Cowgirls. Sydney: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Turan, K. (2009). The thrill is back (so is Reacher). Los Angeles Times, 19 May, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-may-19-et-book19-story.html.Google Scholar
Vermeulen, J. (2017). The lonely road to freedom: Jack Reacher’s interpretation of an American myth. Clues: A Journal of Detection, 35(1), 113–23.Google Scholar
Vitagliano, C. (2022). Not Just Books, personal interview with Lisa Fletcher (6 September).Google Scholar
Watson, D. (2017). Derivative creativity: The financialization of the contemporary American novel. European Journal of English Studies, 21(1), 93105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedel, M. & Pieters, R. (2008). Introduction to visual marketing. In Wedel, M. and Pieters, R., eds., Visual Marketing: From Attention to Action. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 18.Google Scholar
Wilkins, K., & Bennett, L. (2021). Writing Bestsellers: Love, Money, and Creative Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilkins, K., Driscoll, B., & Fletcher, L. (2022). Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First-Century Book Culture. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, C. (2018). Reading isn’t shopping. Sydney Review of Books, 14 August, https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/reading-isnt-shopping/.Google Scholar
Wood, Z. (2023). Indie bookshop numbers hit 10-year high in 2022, defying brutal UK retail year. The Guardian, 6 January, www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/06/indie-bookshop-numbers-hit-10-year-high-in-2022-defying-brutal-uk-retail-year.Google Scholar
Wools-Cobb, T. (2022). Quixotic Books, personal interview with Lisa Fletcher (28 November).Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Space, Place, and Bestsellers
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Space, Place, and Bestsellers
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Space, Place, and Bestsellers
Available formats
×