Hoover writing her own story of success
With devoted fans, she rules bestseller list while defying laws of publishing
Colleen Hoover has sold more books this year than Dr. Seuss. She has sold more books than James Patterson and John Grisham — combined.
To say she’s currently the bestselling novelist in the United States, to even compare her to other successful authors who have landed several books on the bestseller lists, fails to capture the size and loyalty of her audience.
She has held six of the top 10 spots on The New York Times’ paperback fiction bestseller list, a stunning number of simultaneous bestsellers from a single author. She has sold 8.6 million print books this year alone — more copies than the Bible, according to NPD BookScan.
And her success — a shock that she’s still processing, she said — has upended the publishing industry’s most entrenched assumptions about what sells books.
When she self-published her first young-adult novel, “Slammed,” in January 2012, Hoover was making $9 an hour as a social worker, living in a singlewide trailer with her husband, a long-distance truck driver, and their three sons. She was elated when she made $30 in royalties. It was enough to pay the water bill.
Hoover, 42, didn’t have a publisher, an agent or any of the usual marketing machinery that goes into engineering a bestseller: the six-figure marketing campaigns, the talk-show and podcast tours, the speaking gigs and literary awards, or the glowing reviews from mainstream book critics.
But seven months later, “Slammed” hit the Times bestseller list. By May, Hoover had made $50,000 in royalties, money she used to pay back her stepfather for the trailer. By the summer, with two books on the bestseller list — “Slammed” and a sequel, “Point of Retreat” — she quit her job to write full time.
Her success has happened largely on her terms, led by readers who act as her evangelists, driving sales through ecstatic online reviews and viral reaction videos.
Her fans, who are mostly women, call themselves CoHorts and post gushing reactions to her books’ devastating climaxes. A CoHo fan who made the following plea on TikTok is typical: “I want Colleen Hoover to punch me in the face. That would hurt less than these books.”
So far in 2022, five of the top 10 bestselling print books of any genre are Hoover’s, according to NPD BookScan, and many of her bestsellers came out years ago, a phenomenon almost unheard of in publishing. “She’s defying the laws of how the market works,” said publishing industry analyst Peter Hildick-Smith.
Most blockbuster authors break out because of a popular series, such as “Twilight” or “Harry Potter,” or build a brand by writing in a recognizable genre. Hoover is eclectic. She has written romances, a steamy psychological thriller, a ghost story, harrowing novels about domestic violence, drug abuse, homelessness and poverty. Although her books are hard to categorize, most of them have an addictive combination of sex, drama and outrageous plot twists.
“I kept being told that authors need to brand themselves as one thing. And I was like, well, why can’t I brand myself as everything?” Hoover said. “Why can’t I just brand myself as Colleen Hoover?”
Her devoted fan base has given her a degree of control over her work that is unusual in publishing.
She got her start selfpublishing and has continued to do so on occasion, but she has also struck deals with multiple publishers, sometimes selling print rights and keeping the e-book rights. She is under contract to release six books with three publishers over the next five years: three thrillers with Grand Central, a Hachette imprint; two romance novels with Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster; and a novel with Montlake, Amazon Publishing’s romance imprint.
“You think about John Grisham or Lee Child or James Patterson, those guys are creatures of the traditional publishing market. They were made by big publishers, they’ve been working with the same publishers for many years, they have a strong formula — it’s like a machine,” said Kristen McLean, the primary industry analyst for NPD BookScan. “She’s just different. She’s in charge.”
Hoover’s top-selling book, “It Ends with Us” — a drama about a florist who falls for a brooding, abusive neurosurgeon — came out six years ago, but reappeared on the bestseller list
in 2021 and has remained a fixture there. It has sold 4 million copies. After fans begged for a sequel, Hoover wrote a continuation, “It Starts with Us,” which Atria recently released, with a first printing of 2.5 million copies. Collectively, Hoover’s publishers have sold more than 20 million copies.
Hoover’s deft use of social media, where she has 3.9 million followers across platforms and posts goofy, self-deprecating videos, helped grow her audience. So did timing: Although she built a strong fan base early in her career, her sales soared during the pandemic, when her books became a sensation
on TikTok. To date, the hashtag #colleenhoover has amassed more than 2.4 billion views.
Libby McGuire, head of Atria, Hoover’s main publisher, called the phenomenon “the reverse of the Oprah book club.” Whereas Oprah Winfrey was one woman making a recommendation, and sometimes selling 2 million books, now it’s 100 people making a recommendation — and selling 4 million books, McGuire said.
“We’re all just sitting back going, ‘OK, what’s the next one they’re going to pick?’ ” McGuire said.
Hoover, who says she suffers from “the worst case of impostor syndrome
in the world,” seems bewildered by it all.
“I read other people’s books, and I’m so envious. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my God, these are so much better, why are mine selling the way they are?’ ” she said.
“It’s not me,” she continued. “The readers are controlling what is selling right now.”
Fame has come as a shock to Hoover, who is almost painfully introverted and dislikes being in the spotlight. Just as she never expected to be a bestselling author, she said, she doesn’t expect it to last. “Still, in my head I’m like, ‘This is going to end tomorrow,’ ” she said. “So I need to enjoy it.”