The Bestseller Experiment

AJ Pearce’s debut novel Dear Mrs Bird was a Sunday Times Bestseller and she returns with the third in the Emmy Lake series, Mrs Porter Calling. AJ tells us how writing started as a hobby, how it all very nearly went wrong with a plotless romcom, and how the Emmy Lake books were inspired by a chance find on eBay. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtoreality

AJ Pearce’s debut novel Dear Mrs Bird was a Sunday Times Bestseller and she returns with the third in the Emmy Lake series, Mrs Porter Calling. AJ tells us how writing started as a hobby, how it all very nearly went wrong with a plotless romcom, and how the Emmy Lake books were inspired by a chance find on eBay. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtoreality

Antony Johnston is a New York Times bestselling author and the creator of Atomic Blonde, the comic book originally published as The Coldest City that was adapted into the movie starring Charlize Theron. For over twenty years he’s written books, graphic novels, video games, film, and more... And now he’s back with something a bit different: The Dog Sitter Detective is the first of a cosy crime seri...

Antony Johnston is a New York Times bestselling author and the creator of Atomic Blonde, the comic book originally published as The Coldest City that was adapted into the movie starring Charlize Theron. For over twenty years he’s written books, graphic novels, video games, film, and more... And now he’s back with something a bit different: The Dog Sitter Detective is the first of a cosy crime seri...

Freya Berry’s writing career began as a journalist at Reuters. After a stint in New York reporting on the 2016 US election she left to write her acclaimed first novel, The Dictator’s Wife. With her new novel, The Birdcage Library, Freya has ended up creating a love story and a detective mystery, two things she never planned to write. Freya tells about the challenges of writing two timelines, the i...

Heide Goody and Iain Grant have been writing together since 2011 and are best known for their Clovenhoof series, where Satan is made redundant from Hell and sent to live in Birmingham. They tell us how their collaborative process has evolved and how they took everything they’ve learned over the years to launch their new Cozy Craft Mysteries series under the pen name Millie Ravensworth Our novel Ba...

Paul Austin Ardoin is the USA TODAY Bestselling Author of The Fenway Stevenson Mysteries and the Woodhead & Becker Mysteries. And now Paul has a new non-fiction book: From Zero to Four Figures: Making $1000 a Month Self-Publishing Fiction, which brilliantly demystifies the process of making money as an indie author. If you've published one or more books but are struggling to get sales then this is...

Katherine Faulkner’s second thriller The Other Mothers takes us into the school playground and makes it a terrifying place with dark cliques and murderous secrets. Katherine tells us how finding structure and accountability helped her write her debut and how she discovered that the most important person in any novel is the reader. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backt...

Sunday Times bestselling author Katie Fforde brings us her latest novel One Enchanted Evening, which was inspired by a cookery course. Katie has sold over 4.5 million copies in the UK alone and credits the Romantic Novelists’ Association with launching her career and she received their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023. Katie tells us how she started reading Mills & Boon books on the sly, finding...

JD Kirk is the pen name multi-award-winning author, screenwriter, and writer of comics, Barry Hutchison. When he was nine, a kindly librarian wrote his name on the spine of a notebook in which he’d written a terrible short story, and put it on the shelf changing his life. Barry talks about writing over 200 books in 10 years, ignoring the naysayers, and how discovering how a condition called aphant...

Tim Lott is the multi award winning author of ten novels and a memoir, The Scent of Dried Roses, and has been teaching writing for the last ten years, as a lecturer, teacher and mentor.  With his new book, Yes! No! But Wait...!: The One Thing You Need to Know To Write a Novel, Tim has produced a book on writing that is honest, practical and genuinely useful. Our novel Back To Reality is out now be...

Andrea Dunlop began her career in publishing as a publicist for the likes of Doubleday before becoming an author and consultant based in Seattle. Her latest novel, Women Are The Fiercest Creatures, is the story of three women written out of a successful tech startup’s history. Andrea worked for over 15 years in publishing and talks honestly about being on both sides of the publishing experience. O...

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is what search engines like Google use to pair questions with answers. If you want to be found online, then understanding how SEO works is essential. In this deep dive, SEO expert Kelsey E Meyers offers simple and effective tips for authors to help them and their books appear at the top of search results. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.co...

James Naughtie’s voice as presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme will be familiar to listeners all over the world. As well as writing non-fiction, he’s the author of the Will Flemyng thrillers the latest of which, The Spy Across the Water, takes readers from Washington DC to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. James talks us through his unique approach to spy fiction, and the importance of...

Scarlett Brade was born in London, but as a child she spent her summers in Toronto where she fell in love with reading. She self-published her first novel aged twenty-three, but then decided to experience life a little more before returning with her amazing new thriller The Hive, about a chilling murder live-streamed on Instagram. Get inspired by Scarlett’s positive attitude to her life and work a...

Jeevani Charika is the author of Playing for Love, Picture Perfect and more, but she’s also a scientist and has been experimenting with ChatGPT to discover if writers should fear our AI Overlords or embrace them. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtoreality

Sue Watson was BBC TV producer until she wrote her first novel and was hooked. Now she’s a USA Today bestselling author and has sold over a million copies, but that success came as a second act in a writing career where she switched from romcoms to thrillers. Sue tells about that pivotal change, her latest thriller The Wedding Day, and how crime writers tell stories that take us to dark places to...

Jonathan Whitelaw started out as a journalist, writing darkly satirical fiction on his commute to work. Jonathan tells us how he went from thinking that he could never write a crime novel, to creating a new cosy crime series with The Bingo Hall Detectives and The Village Hall Vendetta featuring a son-in-law and mother-in-law crime solving duo! Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperim...

Jessie Keane has Romany heritage and her Gran — who had ’the sight’ — foretold that that Jesse would not only write, but be famous for it. 6.5 million copies later and with each book becoming a Sunday Times top ten bestseller, that prediction has come true. Jesse celebrates fifteen years since her debut novel, Dirty Game, with her latest thriller, Never Go Back. She tells us how she found her voic...

Twin brothers Zack and Michael Urlocker write together as M.Z. Urlocker, and their debut novel The Man from Mittelwerk is a 50s noir thriller with a dash of science fiction. They take us through their collaborative process, how they defined their roles in the project, and whether or not they’ll work together again. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtoreality

Amita Parikh’s debut novel The Circus Train took six years to write and has been earning praise worldwide, but it might never had happened if she hadn’t found herself lost in London, asking for directions. Amita tells us how she bounced back from rejection, why sport is the best way to train for writing, and how she created a writing habit. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment...

Jeevani Charika is the author of Playing for Love, Picture Perfect and more, but she’s also a scientist and has been experimenting with ChatGPT to discover if writers should fear our AI Overlords or embrace them. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtoreality

JS Monroe worked as a foreign correspondent in Delhi, becoming a full-time writer. His psychological thriller Find Me became a bestseller in 2017, and, under the name Jon Stock, he is also the author of five spy thrillers. Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the Dead Spy Running trilogy hiring Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) to write the screenplay for Dead Spy Running, and no...

In this special deep dive episode we speak to Jenny Geras, Managing Director at Bookouture. Jenny tell us what it is that makes this innovative digital first publisher so different, and she answers our listener questions on submissions, the difference in trends with digital and physical books, and if it pays to be prolific. Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtorealit...

Delilah S Dawson is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma and many more titles across an incredibly diverse backlist, and she returns with a new thriller called The Violence which explores themes of women of escaping domestic violence and reclaiming their power. Delilah also gives us tips for writing for big intellectual properties like Star Wars and Minecraft, and the writing...