Is there a formula to pop culture?

PRODUCING HITS + WRITING BESTSELLERS

At the start of 2024, Max Martin became the most commercially successful music producer in history and the second most successful songwriter, behind only Paul McCartney. He’s produced 24 number one singles and written another 26 top 100 songs in his three decades in the music industry.

From Britney Spears to Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift to The Weeknd and even the Backstreet Boys, you’ve likely heard many of the songs that Max Martin has written or produced.

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He’s a hitmaker. He’s the person you call in when your pop star needs a song to capture the attention of the world. For some reason, I always picture Max Martin showing up to the studio in an all black suit with dark sunglasses holding a briefcase. He slams the briefcase on the table and out flies heaps of papers with different songs already written and all the artist needs to do is choose one that fits their style.

It obviously doesn’t go like that. Songwriting is an artform like any writing. But with the level of success that Martin has enjoyed, it makes you wonder if there’s some kind of hack. Maybe he’s figured out a code to writing hits that most other songwriters haven’t.

As an author, I immediately think of James Patterson. I think most of us know by now that Patterson doesn’t write the majority of his own books. Instead, he has what is essentially a writing factory where he produces an outline for a group of ghostwriters to then execute.

Patterson’s books have sold over 400 million copies (Yes, that’s a real number.) He’s obviously figured something out, some kind of formula that works much in the same way that Max Martin has. The volume of books that Patterson puts out is also important to note (dozens a year), but the fact that he’s sold hundreds of millions of books means he’s striking a chord with a wide demographic of reader, and volume alone doesn’t guarantee that.

So what are we to make of this?

As writers, should we believe that it’s possible to engineer hits? To engineer bestsellers? If only it were that easy.

Let’s take a step back for a bit. I mentioned some of the artists that Max Martin has worked with. In addition to those names, he’s also worked with Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, N Sync, Usher, Katie Perry, Def Leppard, and more. If Martin was writing songs for himself or for singers without any clout or talent, the results would’ve certainly been different.

James Patterson wrote Along Came A Spider—without any cowriters—in 1993. That became his breakout hit and there have been close to 30 spinoffs since then, including Alex Cross. It’s the one series Patterson continues to write on his own and I mention it because it gave him a certain amount of acclaim early on in his career. That notoriety meant he had an audience ready and waiting for whatever he put out. And since he chooses to put out dozens of books every year, with the help of his writing factory, he’s able to reach millions of readers.

But in both instances, Martin and Patterson, they aren’t just turning out hits with everything they touch. There have been hundreds of songs released with Martin as a contributor and thousands more he’s likely worked on that have not been released. And while he certainly has an understanding of how to structure pop music, it doesn’t mean he always produces a hit.

Same can be said of Patterson. None of his books are all time bestsellers. He’s simply found a way to reproduce the type of books that have made him successful and wrap those into multiple series that are entertaining reads. Some of those stories get turned into film and the factory continues.

So what can we learn?

First, you need to ask yourself if you’re comfortable with pursuing commercial fiction. Patterson is successful, but he also gets heavily criticized by the writing community for his formulaic approach. Many writers don’t consider him a “great” author (whatever that means) and instead point to his previous career in advertising as the main reason for his success.

If you, too, want to go the commercial route, you better not get smug at the mention of advertising. You’ll need to not just get comfortable, but start excelling at marketing, and I don’t mean one post a week on Substack. I mean you’ll need full fledged marketing campaigns with multiple touchpoints across multiple platforms both online and off. That’s what it’s going to take to achieve anything near the level of success that Patterson has enjoyed.

Are you ready to take on that challenge?

Your other consideration is whether you can come up with a system for continually producing story ideas and executing on those ideas. When you’re playing the commercial game, your best chance of selling your present book is by writing the next one. That’s how it goes. If you’re not ready to be prolific, then this probably isn’t the lane for you.

But if you are prepared to take on the challenge and this type of commercial writing is something you want to pursue, then follow the blueprint that Patterson has set.

That means think in terms of series not just a single story. Are you comfortable collaborating or are you capable of pumping out multiple novels a year on your own? And what vehicle will you use for publicity? For marketing? Can you set aside enough money to invest into ad campaigns?

Patterson spent money out of his own pocket to air a commercial on TV because he believed in Along Came A Spider that much. What are you prepared to do?

And here’s the final thing: when you’re producing this type of commercial work, your writing must be accessible. This isn’t the lane for Booker Prize level prose. Patterson is notorious for one-sentence paragraphs and other formulaic writing techniques that allow him to tell these stories. Your writing will also follow a predictable pattern. You must be okay with that.

Commercial does not equal poor quality, so I don’t want you to get stuck on that. It does, however, require a repeatable process. That’s just the truth. So if that’s something that’s going to bother you, choose another route.