The Bestseller Experiment

SHARI LAPENA is the #1 internationally bestselling author of seven suspense novels including A Stranger in the House and  The Couple Next Door, her debut which was a runaway global bestseller, with 4 million sales worldwide. It was WHSmith's "Book of the Year" in 2016 and the #1 Adult Fiction Title in the UK for 2017. All of Shari's novels have been New York Times, UK Sunday Times, and Globe and M...

Joe Hill is the  #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box, and Strange Weather. Joe, son of Stephen King, is a powerhouse storyteller from an incredible family of writers. Much of his work has been adapted for film and television. His second novel, Horns, was made into a cult horror-comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe; his third novel, NOS4A2, was adapted for television b...

Amy Newmark is Editor-in-Chief of Chicken Soup for the Soul, publishing over 20,000 stories in the last 15 years, launching the careers of many New York Times bestselling authors. Celebrating over half a billion book sales, the Chicken Soup anthology stands as a literary giant, rivalled only by Harry Potter.

Mark Desvaux delves into Part 1 of a fascinating conversation with Amy Newmark, the powerhouse Editor-in-Chief behind Chicken Soup for the Soul. Celebrating over half a billion book sales, the Chicken Soup anthology stands as a literary giant, rivalled only by Harry Potter. Amy unveils how it launched the careers of New York Times bestselling authors and shares how you can get your story published...

Welcome to a New Year's special of the Bestseller Experiment podcast, where we dive into your inner game as a writer. In this episode, Mark Desvaux shares his personal journey and challenges listeners to make bold dream declarations for their writing goals.

Mr Stay's final episode as a co-presenter! The Two Marks celebrate Christmas by looking back at some of Mr Stay's favourite moments of the podcast before he rides off into the sunset. But don't worry! The podcast will continue and Mr D gives a few hints at what's coming, but first we start with a few outtakes…

Mike Gayle joins us to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his Sunday Times top ten bestseller debut novel My Legendary Girlfriend  and  the release of his 18th novel A Song of Me and You, a story of mid-life crisis inspired by a quote from Jim Carrey. Mike takes us from Birmingham to London and his career as a journalist, writing as an agony uncle for teenage girls' magazine Bliss before becoming F...

L.M. Chilton worked as a journalist for The Times, The Mirror and Metro and TV shows like This Morning, The One Show and Loose Women. His debut novel Don't Swipe Right was inspired by years of online dating (the dating part of the story, we hasten to add, not the serial killing bits…) and having worked in the media he took everything he had learned to get his book featured in the national press an...

Tracy Wolff is the New York Times, and USA Today bestselling author of over sixty novels from Austin Texas, Nina Croft is an incredibly prolific author from the UK now living in Spain and they have collaborated on Star Bringer, a new adult romance novel billed as Firefly meets the Breakfast Club. Tracy and Nina take us through the process of co-writing a novel and offer great tips for anyone think...

Jake Lamar developed his latest work Viper's Dream as both a radio play and a novel. Jake tells us what he learned working for Time magazine, gives us a crucial tip for writing about real figures from recent history, and how he learned to make his writing sing...  

The author of 49 books and counting, Graham Hurley returns with his latest WWII thriller The Blood of Others. He takes us through his extraordinary career and discusses writing in a genre that he wasn't a fan of, writing a series without a recurring lead character and the benefits of long publisher lunches.

Fiona is an acclaimed bestselling author, whose books have sold millions of copies and been translated into more than thirty different languages worldwide. Her latest novel is The Cypress Maze, set in Tuscany and is the perfect book for these long winter nights. Fiona has a degree in Geography, has worked as an IT systems engineer, then in PR and marketing and the wine industry and as a yoga teach...

Mira V Shah is a British-African-Indian author and legal writer who lives in North London with her husband, three good dogs and one mediocre cat. She studied History at the University of Warwick before practising as a City lawyer. During the pandemic, Mira wrote her first ever novel, HER, a psychological drama, which explores themes of female friendship, flawed perception, trauma and race. Mira te...

Hailing from Scotland's wet and wild west coast, Michael writes sweeping and epic fantasy and since 2018 has sold over 330,000 books topping Amazon and Audible charts along the way. He's also worked for Bloomsbury publishing, and is the co-founder of digital publisher Portal Books. He's written The Dragon's Blade trilogy and now returns with Defiant, the third book in the ongoing Songs of Chaos se...

Ivy Ngeow was born and raised in Malaysia and is a multi-award winning author. Her latest novel The American Boyfriend was longlisted for the Avon x Mushens Entertainment Prize for Commercial Fiction Writers of Colour 2022. Ivy is a musician, she's also written non-fiction cookery books, diet books, interior design books, she sells tie-in merch for her fiction, she's a powerhouse of creativity and...

We celebrate seven years of the podcast with the amazing Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which has sold over 6 million copies worldwide. She returns with a new novel, Sisters Under The Rising Sun, which transports the reader to the women in Japanese POW camps in WWII and is another incredibly powerful story. Heather talks about the role of listening in her work, creating fict...

Mountain Ash Press is the brainchild of authors Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Caroline Topperman who wanted to bring a combination of writer services and publication experience to create a new kind of Hybrid publisher. They talk about the challenges of being an independent publisher and what they can offer to authors.  

Julie Owen Moylan is a novelist and filmmaker. Her graduation short film 'BabyCakes' scooped Best Film awards at the Swansea Film Festival where Ken Russell was a judge! And Julie has written two novels, THAT GREEN EYED GIRL and 73 DOVE STREET, which was released just this summer. Julie talks about how she knows when it's the right time to tell a story, about her pivotal careers day at school, and...

The award-winning Gareth L. Powell returns to the podcast with Descendant Machine his new science fiction epic. He also tells about working with Peter F Hamilton, how starting a commercial thriller led him to writing his most personal book, how he wrote a book on writing almost by accident, and he gives us some insight to the future of authors and social media, but how being positive pays dividend...

Jesse Sutanto is the award-winning, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers and I'm Not Done With You Yet. Jesse tells how she learned about human behaviour through real estate and weddings, why she doesn't dwell on projects that are on submission, and why she writes in 15 minute sprints she calls pure writing.

We are delighted to welcome back Suzie Edge for this special episode of the podcast! Suzie is a phenomenon on TikTok and after her smash hit debut book Mortal Monarchs she returns with Vital Organs, a wonderful dissection of history's strangest body parts. Suzie takes us through her incredible career so far and reveals the role that vital organs, poo and wee and have played in getting her the ulti...

Harriet Muncaster is an award-winning author and illustrator. Her Isadora Moon books have sold over two million copies worldwide. And in 2020, Muncaster also published Bad and Glittering, the first part of her middle-grade series Victoria Stitch. And now she's here with the latest Victoria Stitch book Dark & Sparkling. Harriet reveals how she develops her incredible characters, shares how she divi...

Sarah Moorhead returns to the podcast with The Treatment, her extraordinary new novel that tackles issues of justice and revenge with compassion and heart. She reveals how she got back into writing after being dropped by her publisher and agent, and how being an idealist fuels her desire to keep telling great stories whatever it takes.

In this very special episode, international bestselling author Linwood Barclay returns to the podcast to tease us with details of his new thriller The Lie Maker. He gives us tips aplenty for writers, reveals how a correspondence with Ross Macdonald changed his career, why he loves collaborating with editors, and if he'll ever co-write with some up-and-coming author called Stephen King… Oh, and sta...

Teresa Driscoll is a former BBC TV news presenter whose psychological thrillers have sold over two million copies across the world. Her first thriller I Am Watching You hit Kindle Number 1 in the UK, USA and Australia and has sold more than a million copies in English alone. For decades, Teresa was a journalist working across newspapers, magazines and television.