Books: an essential side to the It Girl’s Breakfast.

by Alana Levinson

What makes a book a success–a New-York-Times-Bestseller-Oprah’s-book-club-pick-movie-option kind of success–is an elusive formula, one that’s impossible to crack. But that doesn’t stop everyone in publishing from trying. It’s the reason why you’ll see a sleeper hit like The Help or 50 Shades of Gray explode, and then a year later, 10 copycats will follow, none of which work in quite the same way.

For a book to really do well, it takes what former book editor [she is now an associate features editor at HowAboutWe media) Meredith Haggerty calls “a weird bit of magic.”

“People don’t want to read books unless they feel like there’s no choice,” she says. “Like it’s a cultural moment that they have to be a part of.” To add to the confusion, there isn’t a way to measure exactly what makes a book sell; it’s a curious combination of intangibles like timing, positioning and luck.

But one thing is for sure nowadays: success means tapping into “the zeitgeist”, something that isn’t always ruled by the literary scene. Depending on the book, it requires reaching out to people that might not traditionally be in bookish circles–those who are into fashion or TV or interior design or whatever. The game is figuring out the audience and then meeting them where they are (which is not always in the New York Times Book Review). Sometimes it’s on Tumblr or mommy blogs.

Even better is if a “cultural touchstone” (another Haggerty gem) subtly promotes it via social media. We’re talking people like fashionista Leandra Medine, aka The Man Repeller.

Or actresses Emma Roberts and Amanda Seyfreid, who all love to Instagram photos of what they’re reading.

Who can resist the urge to show the world they’re literary and smart? We imagine the pull is even stronger if you exist in a sphere, like fashion or entertainment, where bookishness is not assumed.

The new book #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso actually has a hashtag in its title–a clever nod to who the book is for. Amoruso is famous for her wildly successful online retailer Nasty Gal. Its rapid rise has been credited in part to Amoruso’s amazing use of social media, which propelled the store from eBay to an empire in LA. The book is a memoir of sorts, which chronicles how Amoruso went from “thief to chief.”

A couple of months ago, Girls creator Lena Dunham posted a picture of herself holding a galley on her Instagram and wrote “Very honored to have my advance copy of the brain-inspiring #GIRLBOSS @sophia_amoruso.”

Lena, like other It Girl celebrities, is taking to social media to show the world that reading books is cool. I think this kind of literary tastemaking is potentially more powerful than any press clip you could receive. And it goes beyond just books, of course: Tom Ford recently said that an Instagram pic of Rihanna wearing his clothes is better than any rave review.

The strategy seems to be working. According to Bookscan, #GIRLBOSS has sold about 22,600 copies so far and is on the NYT Bestseller list (in the Advice, How-To, Misc. category) for the fourth week. The sale number is potentially low, because it doesn’t include special markets or the personal website sales through Nastygal.com. And Haggerty surmised that “if #GIRLBOSS is doing well, it’s because of making the hashtag in the title.”

Dana Trombley, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at Harper Collins, agrees that word of mouth is the key ingredient for a book’s success. But now it goes beyond just talking to your friends at a dinner party–it’s translated into vast digital space.

“It’s brought us to a whole new level of recommending books and the concept of the book club,” she says. “Now, people are having meaningful discussion about books all the time, all over the world.”

The industry, unsurprisingly, is still playing catch up to this new digital world of cultural capital. When I worked in book publishing, there was a lot of focus on getting a good review in “The Trades”: Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. These are the publications booksellers look at when deciding which books to buy. In that way, they are definitely important. I was also told that a good or bad review was indicative of how a book would do in terms of press; that editors at magazines and newspapers read them and build impressions. After a bad review came out, it was common for the editor to sullenly come over to my desk and whisper: “Did you see the trade?”

When I crossed over to the other side and started writing professionally myself, I found they might not be as important publicity-wise as I once thought. “You know who cares not a lick about PW? College students and the people who buy them presents,” says Haggerty of the audience for her book “Adulting” by Kelly Williams Brown, which turned out to be a hit. “Those people are never going to read Publishers Weekly.”

Plus, there’s something more intimate about someone like Eva Chen, Lucky Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Instagramming a picture of a great book she happened upon at the Newark airport amidst her breakfast of tacos, hashbrowns and pancakes. She calls it #saturdaybookclub, and in this case, the hashtag really works.

Alana Levinson is the editor/publisher of STEVIE ZINE, an online culture mag for and by women. As a journalist, she’s investigated Bachelorette bracketology, attended the largest Christian Rock music festival in the country, and spent time with young republicans and cowboy poets.

  Before getting her master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley this spring, she worked in New York in both magazine and book publishing. See more of her work on her website or tweet her @alanalevinson.