Cracking the Code of Bestselling Books

What factors do The Girl on the Train, 50 Shades of Grey and The DaVinci Code have in common? A new book promises to crack the code that lands books on the New York Times Bestseller List. University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Matt Jockers teamed up with co-author Jodie Archer on The Bestseller Code, a new book based on their research. Jockers and Archer used the heavy duty computer power at UNL’s Holland Computing Center to study bestselling books and explain why some are hits and some sit on the shelf. Computer algorithms search for patterns in word choice, plot, sentence construction and other factors.