Tag: veronica roth

March 22, 2019

5 Authors Who’ve Sold Over 30 Million Books

It is not an easy thing—becoming a successful author. Rarely does it happen over night and for many, it doesn’t happen at all. It takes a lot to become a truly successful weaver of worlds, but it can happen. The following authors are examples of that. Selling over 30 MILLION copies each, here are five of writers you need to read.

1. Scott Turow

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Lawyer-turned-author Scott Turow has written eleven novels in addition to three nonfiction books, which in total have been translated into over forty languages and sold more than 30 million copies. He is best known for his legal thrillers Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty, and Personal Injuries, which was named by Time magazine as the Best Fiction Novel of 1999. Turow has won multiple literary awards, most notably the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers’ Association.

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In addition to this, Turow has no less than six Hollywood movie adaptations under his belt, including Presumed Innocent, starring Harrison Ford, and Reversible Evidence, starring William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman. Turow was elected the president of the Authors Guild in 2010, and was previously president from 1997 to 1998. He still practices law, most of the cases he works are pro-bono, including 1995 case of Alejandro Hernandez, a man who spent eleven years on death row for a murder he did not commit.

2. Charlaine Harris

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New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries series has sold more than 30 million copies as well as becoming a hit TV show, True Blood. Harris has penned at least twenty-five novels including the Aurora Teagarden Series, the Lily Bard series and the Harper Connelly series.

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After much ghost-story writing and teen angst poetry, Harris began her novel writing career with Real Murders, the first in the Aurora Teagarden series which was nominated for Best Novel 1990 at the Agatha Awards. 1996 saw the release of the first in the Lily Bard series, set in small town Arkansas where Harris lived at the time. In 2001, Harris released the first Sookie Stackhouse mystery, Dead Until Dark, which won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery. The series would become the Southern Vampire Mysteries, later adapted by HBO into hit TV show True Blood.

3. Neil Gaiman

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Author of such beloved modern classics as Stardust, Coraline, and American Gods, among many others, Neil Gaiman is something of an institution at this stage. Straddling the dual worlds of novel writing and graphic novel writing, Gaiman’s Sandman series of graphic novels alone have sold over 30 million copies, while his novels have shifted an additional 10 million copies.

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Among Gaiman’s countless accolades the the Newbery and Carnegie medalsHugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards. In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.

4. Rick Riordan

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Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, which has inspired two film adaptations, has sold a cool 55 million copies and been translated into forty-two languages. He first got the idea for the Percy Jackson series, which follows a young boy who discovers he is the son of ancient Greek god Poseidon, when inventing bedtime stories for his sons, one of whom has ADHD and dyslexia, thus influencing Riordan’s decision to have the character Percy deal with these conditions, also.

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Riordan co-created the children’s series The 39 Clues, and has penned many additional books including the Tres Navarre series for adults, The Heroes of Olympus series, and The Maze of Bones, which topped The New York Times Best Seller list.

5. Veronica Roth

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Divergent author Veronica Roth is the youngest author on this list, having penned hit YA dystopian tale Divergent at just nineteen, and since selling over 40 million copies of Divergent and its sequels. She had a publishing deal before graduating Northwestern University, and each of the books, Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant were made into Hollywood films films.

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In January 2017, Roth released a new YA novel, Carve the Mark, the sequel to which, The Fates Divide came out in April 2018.

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November 7, 2018

10 Most Followed YA Authors Instagrams

There are are innumerable ways to judge an author’s success—the first way tends to be counting book sales. Instagram follows don’t measure the technical quality of writing, rather they measure less tangible, but still extremely important things: connection and community. These ten authors are the most successful (verified) YA authors of Instagram, and they’re successful because of you. Chances are, you’re better off because of them.

1. John Green (2.2 million)

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Everybody knows John Green, YouTube sensation and author of six bestsellers: Looking for Alaska; An Abundance of Katherines; Paper Towns; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; The Fault in Our Stars; and Turtles all the Way Down. His novels have spawned two film adaptations with serious all-star casts (box-office hit The Fault in Our Stars and the more recent Paper Towns). Also popular for his YouTube videos on the Vlogbrothers channel, Green frequently uses his status to raise money for charity and teach online history courses. Famously, critics believe Green has redefined YA literature, naming him one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. It’s no surprise that the so-called ‘Teen Whisperer‘ is the most popular YA author on Instagram.

2. Rick Riordan (543k)

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Most famous for his Percy Jackson series (starting with The Lightning Thief), Rick Riordan is the bestselling author of over twenty books. Riordan conceptualized the series as he told bedtime stories to his son, and it was his son who inspired its eponymous protagonist’s ADHD and Dyslexia—traits that help to make Percy Jackson a relatable character for readers with learning disabilities. The series currently has two film adaptations. Translations of his work exist in forty-two languages, and they’ve sold well over 30 million copies in the U.S. alone. His Trials of Apollo series (start with The Hidden Oracle) is still ongoing.

3. Cassandra Clare (491k)

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Cassandra Clare is the creator of the sprawling Shadowhunters universe where angelic warriors hunt demons to protect our world. On page, this entails a lot of leather-wearing misfits who uncover shocking secret after shocking secret as they do cool, edgy teenager things (like riding on the back of flying motorcycles or constantly making out). The universe contains three series: The Mortal Instruments (start with City of Bones); The Infernal Devices (start with Clockwork Angel), and The Dark Artifices (start with Lady Midnight). The universe will expand to include at least one other trilogy, and it already includes several spin-off novels featuring favorite characters. The Shadowhunters universe has been adapted multiple times, first as a film and second as wildly popular TV series. Perhaps most impressively, Clare has been a champion of LGBT+ representation in YA genre fiction, even in the genre’s earlier days. Since the universe’s creation in 2007, every single Shadowhunters book has featured queer protagonists across a wide spectrum of identities.

4. Hank Green (403k)

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Hank Green may be the only author on this list most famous for something besides his writing. In addition to his recent bestselling debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Green has had a devoted Internet following since 2007 as one half of the Vlogbrothers, his shared YouTube channel with brother John Green. Hank and John are the co-founders of VidCon, the world’s largest conference for online videos. Hank has also acted as a contributing producer for a number of popular podcasts and web shows like Sexplanations and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

5. Sarah J. Maas (300k)

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Author of the Throne of Glass series, Sarah J. Maas experienced a career takeoff in 2008 when earlier drafts of the series became some of the most popular works on FictionPress.com. A Cinderella story with a dark twist, Maas’ series has been an international bestseller with publication in fifteen countries. Amazingly, these weren’t even the original drafts—Maas began writing the series’ first book, Throne of Glass, at the tender age of sixteen. Maas has also written a prequel series (start with The Assassin and the Pirate Lord) and the A Court of Thorn and Roses series (start with, you guessed it, A Court of Thorn and Roses). Her first adult fantasy series is forthcoming.

6. Jenny Han (225k)

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Earlier this summer, Netflix released the film adaptation of Jenny Han‘s novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before with a massively positive audience response, leading to a huge spike in Instagram follows. Its sequel, P.S. I Still Love You, won the Young Adult Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Han is also the author of a YA romance trilogy, starting with the novel The Summer I Turned Pretty. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Han wrote her first book, middle school coming-of-age Shug, while she was still a college student.

7. James Dashner (211k)

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James Dashner is the hugely prolific author of nearly twenty novels, including the dystopian hit The Maze Runner, which earned a film adaptation. Dashner was dropped by Penguin Random House in 2018 following sexual harassment allegations.

8. Veronica Roth (206k)

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The definition of a prodigy and star, Veronica Roth sold film rights to her first novel, Divergent, months before the book saw print—and she sold the publishing rights before graduating college. Roth wrote the first draft of the novel during senior year winter break, and it sold well over a million copies within the next two years. Roth is also famous for her novels Insurgent and Allegiant, the second and third books of her dystopian series in which society operates with personality-based factions that define each person’s profession and goals. (And believe it or not, removing all kind and generous people from the government so that they can work on farms is not a great leadership strategy.)

9. Colleen Hoover (202k)

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Breakout romance novelist Colleen Hoover had no intentions of ever mainstream-publishing her first novel, Slammed. Astoundingly, it made the New York Times bestseller list as a self-published work. Hoover published Hopeless just a year later—and it became the first self-published novel to ever break #1 on the chart. A five-time winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards, Hoover has written eleven bestsellers in only seven years. While several of Hoover’s works have been published with Atria Books, Hoover has shattered the limits of what self-publishing can accomplish.

10. Rainbow Rowell (136k)

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Rainbow Rowell is the author of three wildly popular YA novels: Fangirl, Eleanor & Park, and Carry On. Famously, Fangirl began as a NaNoWriMo project—yes, that means the first draft was written in thirty days! Rowell famously faced controversy for the exploration of domestic violence in Eleanor & Park, with one Minnesota school district canceling her appearance and banning her book during Banned Books Week. Sounds like somebody missed the point! Despite this, the novel went on to earn a Michael L. Printz Award Honor, one of the highest recognitions in YA literature (other honored books include Angie Thomas‘ acclaimed The Hate U Give).

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July 10, 2018

13 Quotes from Dystopian Novels to Get You Fired Up

For as long as we have been granted freedoms, there have been people fighting to take those freedoms away; this is the most human of cycles. There has never been (and will likely never be, at least not right now) a time when people haven’t had to stand up against the systemic and societal oppression they’ve been forced to deal with everyday.

We’ve been warned about what can happen when we allow ourselves to stop caring about the state of the world and the other people inhabiting it by authors since the beginning of time; the entire dystopian genre is centered around it. So, don’t allow yourself to grow sedentary but also don’t grow too fearful; for as many greedy, selfish, oppressive, bad figureheads there are in existence, there are way, way more of us who really do care and move with empathy while fighting for a world of genuine equality.

So, take a look at these thirteen quotes from dystopian novels and give yourself that extra push you may need to keep marching forward!

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.” Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Every faction conditions it’s members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that, no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.” Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren’t using – you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell, 1984

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.” Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.” Lois Lowry, The Giver

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.” Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Tell freedom I said hello.” Lauren DeStefano, Wither

“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.” Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

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March 29, 2018

Bright Days After Long Nights: How 4 Authors Reached Overnight Success

We’ve often heard about our favourite authors’ overnight success with their debut novel. But what we often forget to mention while reciting their tales of success are the years hard work and dedication needed to achieve the success that appears to come overnight. In so many cases, years, if not decades, of effort and hard work led up to overnight success for the most famous authors out there.

These authors are an inspiration to those struggling to get their break, and to aspiring authors who have forgotten that after every night, a day rises. The longer and darker the night, the brighter the day.

1. J.K. Rowling

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J.K. Rowling’s story starts in Manchester. Waiting for a delayed train, she imagines the character of her first book, which, years later, would break many records. The death of her mother, six months after she began writing Harry Potter, effected her deeply. She moved to Portugal, hoping for a fresh start, but did not feel better there. She married a man named Jorge Arantes and had a child, but the rocky marriage lasted merely thirteen months.

She returned to England with her daughter, rendered penniless. She wrote in cafes with her daughter behind her in a pram. But her days of misery did not end when she finished her book. She faced much rejection before her manuscript was finally accepted by Bloomsbury. And merely three days after the novel was first published in the UK, Scholastic bid an exuberant amount of $100,000 for the American publishing rights. The long night ended on a bright day and today, she is the most recognized author in the world, with over 500 million copies of her work sold.

2. Veronica Roth

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On the face of things, Veronica Roth’s story begins and ends with the fact that she wrote her debut novel Divergent during her college break and became a bestselling author. But just as there is a day after every night, there is a night before every day. Roth’s story, in fact, begins way back when she was twelve-years-old. She was very focused on her craft. The instant success of her first book was actually the result of years of studying the art of creative writing and taking creative writing classes. Her initial manuscript was rejected and even after it was accepted, she had to rewrite major portions of the book.

3. Sarah J. Maas

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Maas began writing what was to become her debut bestselling novel, Throne of Glass, at the age of sixteen. Her initial story, titled Queen of Glass was based on Cinderella. Its premise was “What if Cinderella was not a servant, but an assassin? And what if she didn’t attend the ball to meet the prince, but to kill him, instead?” The first few chapters of her novel were posted on FictionPress.com where it was one of the most popular stories until she decided to remove them to from the site in order to publish it. She started sending out queries to agents in 2008 until she found one in 2009. Her book was finally purchased by Bloomsbury in 2010 and published in 2012. Her night was indeed very long and dark but the brightness of her day made up for it!

4. Stephen King

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King did a variety of odd jobs to support his family, who lived in a small trailer. He was a janitor, gas pump attendant, and worker at an industrial laundry. He wrote just two pages of his debut bestseller Carrie and threw it away in anger and disappointment as it wasn’t any ‘good’. Lucky for him, his wife picked it up and read it. She inspired her husband to continue writing as she wanted to know what happened next. But just finishing the novel didn’t deliver him from his long night. He was rejected by no less that thirty different publishers, but his wife encouraged him not to give up until he found one. It wasn’t long before he became King of Horror.

These are merely few examples. But they help us remind that after a night, however long and dark it may be, comes a brighter day (hopefully in the form of huge success!)

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