How to predict book sales? Use a presidential election forecasting technique

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Maybe you have already heard about „The Keys To The White House“, a system invented by Allan Lichtman that fantastically predicted the nine last presidential election results. In 2016 the author himself didn’t believe that Donald Trump would win. But the system said „yes“ ... and he won.
(c) CharismaNews.com
In other words, Lichtman's forecasting system overcame the author’s own subjectivity, the hardest quest for any system. So it really is a system.
And I think that politics and publishing have much in common. Readers do vote too with their wallets. Then a crazy idea came to transform Lichtman’s system so that it would predict success for a new book.
So I did.
Check out. My system consists of a fourteen-questions poll (original one had thirteen). If ’yes’ answers dominate, the book wins. If ’no’ – drop your plot to a bucket.

  1. Contest. There were no bestseller books in the category recently.
  2. Sector Mandate. The book gets good promotions from respected persons in the subject area.
  3. The author“s last book has been successful.
  4. There are no signs of preparation of urgently waited and much discussed books.
  5. There have been no disclosures of false in recently published books.
  6. The subject area of the book is growing faster than in previous years.
  7. The book proposes position on the topic strongly different from previously published books.
  8. There are no social issues distracting people from the subject area of the book. Or the subject area is not tabooed.
  9. Scandal: The author is untainted by major scandal.
  10. Failures: The author has had no major failures of books published before.
  11. Professional success: The author achieves a major success in his/her professional area.
  12. Charisma: The author is charismatic or a hero in some area.
  13. Challengers charisma: The competing authors are not charismatic or heros.
  14. Support from a strong publisher or sponsor.

So will it or won’t it work? I can’t resist a temptation to try on my next book.
Originally written for LinkedIn Pulse.

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