Paradigm Shift: The Colleen Hoover Story

Missing Pages, Season 02 Episode 01 - 

Paradigm Shifts: The Colleen Hoover Story

Bethanne Patrick:

This episode contains discussions of sex and domestic violence.

Before the dawn of social media, many exceptional authors who had a spot on the New York Times Bestseller List got there through a process involving prestigious institutions and well-connected writers groups. 

Lee Child studied law with no intention of becoming a lawyer. Donna Tartt was nudged into a renowned Classics program after a college professor noticed her rising star.

And “The Da Vinci Code’s Dan Brown got a job at the highly selective Exeter Academy where his dad taught,

A lot of these writers were independently well-off, or had alternate revenue streams.

Charlie Rose Show 1999:

Michael Critchton went to Harvard as a medical student, always wanting to write. Since then he’s turned writing into gold.

Bethanne Patrick:

The formula was straightforward enough – have money, win friends, influence people, 

But what about struggling writers who weren’t so lucky? There wasn’t much of a pipeline to get published… It was often a pipe dream.  

But in this episode we're discussing an author who found another path. And maybe. Maybe. might have figured out a new formula for Dan Brown levels of success.

Colleen Hoover. Who became the first self-published author to hit #1 on the NYTimes bestseller list."

How did she go from one in a million to, according to Book Scan, selling 14.3 million print copies of her novels?

At a glance, Hoover’s unexpected rise to fame would seem to make her an aspirational blueprint for young writers wondering how to hack publishing. 

But will that blueprint become a blue-ribbon strategy – or is Colleen Hoover a unique phenomenon in the book-publishing industry?

Welcome back to Missing Pages. I’m your host, literary critic and writer, Bethanne Patrick. This is the podcast where we examine some of the most surprising, industry-shaking controversies in the literary world and try to make sense of them. 

This is the first episode in a series on a paradigm shift we’re seeing across the publishing industry – in essence, social media and online consumption has created new opportunities and new challenges for publishing, and we’re going to explore the ramifications. 

As Hoover herself told the New York Times: “It’s not me. The readers are controlling what is selling right now.”

Chapter One: The Rise of CoHo

AUDIO MONTAGE of GUSHING COHO FANS:

“I just wanted to share this book that I just finished. It’s by Colleen Hoover.”

“In five short days, we are going to be blessed by a new Colleen Hoover book and man, your girl is excited.”

“I’ve read every single Colleen Hoover book, but these are my favorites. Just know you are literally asking me to rank my children.”

“This book will frickin’ change your life, okay?”

“I loved “Reminders of Him” by Colleen Hoover.”

“I have read almost every single book written by Colleen Hoover.”

Bethanne Patrick:

Colleen Hoover was a social worker from small town Texas who started self-publishing novels in her free time, and is now the top-selling author in the USA.
A come up that seems so unlikely, you’d think it’s fiction. 

But how did she do it?

One: she took advantage of new resources available to her, like self publishing and social media. Two: In part due to the use of these new platforms she found the perfect underserved community for her kind of writing. She was the perfect author for this moment. Three: her writing breeds controversy, and that controversy led to more social media and real world conversation, leading to more book sales.

Colleen Hoover was born Margarat Colleen Fennell on December 11th, 1979, just outside Sulphur Springs, Texas.

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

‘My mother and father divorced when I was two and one of my earliest memories was him throwing a tv at her’

Bethanne Patrick:

The relationship between Hoover’s mother and late father was abusive – something that would one day impact the stories she wrote. And might have led her to daydream away from her chaotic upbringing.

As early as age 5, Hoover remembers tending to calves on her family’s dairy farm before school and making up stories as soon as she learned to write. 

And these experiences didn’t just feed her desire to write, they also informed her writing itself. Different from the Dan Brown’s and Donna Tartt’s of the world, it’s possible that Hoover would go on to resonate with so many readers because of this unique perspective.

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

‘I just had all these stories I wanted to tell and I was just super excited to learn the alphabet and I was very disappointed that I didn’t get to write my very first story the first day of kindergarten’

Bethanne Patrick:

The desire to write stayed with Hoover. But given her background, becoming a professional author seemed more like a fantasy than a possible profession.

CLIP FROM GBH Interview with Colleen:

“Didn't’ really think that I could make a career and support my family on a writing degree. So I ended up majoring in social work”

Bethanne Patrick:

By that point, she was living in a trailer with her husband and three kids. She worked for Child Protective Services, and writing was something she was trying out on the side, as a hobby…with a borrowed laptop.

CLIP FROM GBH Interview with Colleen:

“it wasn’t until I was 31 about ten years ago that I started writing my first book.”

Bethanne Patrick:

In January 2012, she uploaded her debut novel, “Slammed,” to Amazon.

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

We had bought my grandmother a Kindle for Christmas. I was researching how to get a document onto a Kindle and came across Amazon’s self-publishing platform and I was like ‘oh I can just load it here and she can download it’.

Bethanne Patrick:

This is the first big shift allowing Hoover to live her dreams. She could just upload it. Something- I’m sure you all know- nearly everyone can do now. But Hoover was early to it. Amazon’s self publishing platform Kindle Direct launched in 2007 with 5.7% of the self-published book market. By 2012 Kindle Direct would have 56% of that market share, which pales in comparison to 5 years later when it controlled more than 90% of that market. The point being: Hoover was earlier than most to the self publishing game.

And then, something unusual happened. 6 people bought the book. People Hoover didn’t know. She was shocked.

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

“Were you surprised?” - “Yes (laughs) … astonished”.

Bethanne Patrick:

By this point, Amazon’s self-publishing feature was only five years old. Big name authors who typically went the traditional route to publish began generating buzz for the alternative path…Again, those were big names.

And even for them, it was a process.

Remember, publishing a book is about more than writing it. You need to edit, design, package, and put the book in front of the reader through distribution, publicity, marketing, and more. The rise of ebook publishing removed a lot of the physical constraints from the process, but it still relied on the author to find their readers.

It’s one thing to hear that national book award finalist John Edgar Wideman, found success when he pivoted to self-publishing in 2010. For popular authors like him, readership already existed. 

For Colleen Hoover, six readers probably felt like finding 6,000. 

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

Four months later, ‘Slammed’ the story she planned to share just with her family, landed her on the New York Times bestsellers list.

Bethanne Patrick:

In 2012, the same year she self-published her first book, she made the New York Times Best Seller list  and was picked up by Simon & Schuster.   

The fact that Slammed took off as a self published book with an author no one knew was remarkable. This is the kind of thing authors dream about. As one of the early self published authors on Kindle Direct, Hoover was able to connect with an audience eager for her stories. It was like finding a winning lottery ticket. 

It may be worth pausing here to explain that Hoover’s writing style is emotionally charged – her characters are flawed and their actions can be problematic. The plots, though occasionally far-fetched, don’t feel like they’re outside the realm of possibility. All of this to say that Hoover’s books are gripping and relatable at the same time, and really resonated with readers.

Between 2016 and 2019, Hoover was churning out books that performed increasingly well. But her numbers became staggering in 2020.

As the global pandemic affected our interactions with the outside world and we looked for ways to distract ourselves, many turned to reading. And the number one place to go for it was that new dance app everyone was on…What was it called?

TikTok Montage

Bethanne Patrick:

Oh, right. TikTok.

Of course, social media has had a huge influence on publishing, back in 2008 I created a twitter account,  at the book maven- if you want to follow- and I started doing a hashtag, friday reads, where people would give recommendations. That had an impact. Then when instagram took off the recommenders became influencers.

Those who amassed followings in this arena were added to publishing PR lists, as publishers began to understand the impact those Bookstagram influencers had on book sales.

Technology had done its thing. And the publishing world was shifting to accommodate it. 

Colleen Hoover was no stranger to these online communities.

LAURA MILLER:

She started out giving away free copies of her first self-published book to, um, book bloggers. And then she was a BookTuber and then she was a Bookstagrammer.

Bethanne Patrick:

That’s Laura Miller, a books and culture columnist for Slate. She wrote the 2022 article covering Colleen Hoover’s rise to success.

LAURA MILLER:

She's been very good at, at, at getting the word out about her books. On all of these different platforms. but she really kind of reached her apotheosis with BookTok.

Bethanne Patrick:

BookTok really took off in 2020. Over the past few years, BookTokers have amassed major followings reviewing their favorite books. And those aren't the ones written by William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, and Toni Morrison. No, these readers are in search of stories they can devour and – more important than that – relate to…

YouTuber Jack Edwards:

I have to warn you these pages here might get a bit wet because your tears may stain them cause this book will make you sob like a little baby.

Bethanne Patrick:

This is another key to Hoover’s success. Her dramatic books paired perfectly with dramatic tik tok videos.  

YouTuber Jack Edwards:

I’m pretty sure they actually invented the chef kiss, just to describe this book. Like this is one of my favorite books of all time. This book will rip your heart into tiny pieces and you will enjoy every damn second of it.

Bethanne Patrick:

For a Hoover fan, the more drama, the better. 

TikToks with Hoover’s name in them have amassed more than 4 billion views.

TIKTOK CLIP:

“That was amazing. Damnit. It really gives you a whole new perspective.”

Bethanne Patrick:

The quick clips on tiktok play right into Hoover’s style of writing.

LAURA MILLER:

It really relies on an immediate grabbing of your emotions. So it's someone crying at someone's laughing, at someone's shouting that these are the best books ever and or. Or Colleen Hoover, how could you end this book this way? I don't know how you could, you know, that kind of thing. It's very, it, it, it's really well suited to, um, kind of emotional intensity and extremes. It’s a form that just cuts to the chase really fast.

Bethanne Patrick:

So what has contributed to Hoover's surprising success so far? New tech advances. Self publishing and online communities that have increasingly celebrated tear jerkers, she was really at the right time and right place with both factors. But it can't be overlooked that she gives her audience what they want.

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

Hoover’s romances and psychological thrillers are emotionally gripping. Her most popular novel It Ends With Us centers on domestic violence and is loosely based on her mother’s life.

Bethanne Patrick:

The tearful reviews calling Hoover’s book life-changing probably brought more readers into her fanbase. And her sales are a testament to that.

TODAY SHOW INTERVIEW:

Hoover’s dominates the New York Times bestseller’s list, once claiming eight of the top ten paperback spots, simultaneously. 

Bethanne Patrick:

Jim Milliot, Co-Editorial Director at Publishers Weekly had the specifics.

JIM MILLIOT INTERVIEW:

If we look back to 2022, she was a bestselling author. By a long shot, using book scan numbers, which most of the industry does. Print sales was 14 million copies sold last, last year, which, uh, you know, I think there was like four or five others authors that sold a million copies. So she was in pretty much a stratosphere all around. 

Bethanne Patrick:

For some perspective here, Hoover bested perennial bestseller contenders like Stephen King and Delia Owens on the 2022 NPD Bookscan bestseller list. Where The Crawdads Sing, with the help of its fanfare and film adaptation press sits firmly at spot 4. The top three -- all Colleen Hoover. And number 5? You guessed it -- Hoover. In the top 10, Colleen Hoover commands 6 best seller spots.

You don’t get that kind of success just out of luck. Hoover’s works seemed to crack a code on what a particular audience was looking for. That’s after the break.

Chapter Two: The CoHo Playbook

When it comes to writing a good book, all authors employ a different approach. James Patterson swears by writing short chapters to keep his thrillers as fast paced as the rate at which he churns them out, while Donna Tartt builds entire worlds in slow-moving plots that largely parallel the ten-year process she devotes to each book.

My approach? Morning pages along with coffee and breakfast – putting in a little time every day to make something intentional and authentic to my voice.

According to Laura Miller, Colleen Hoover’s best-selling approach has something to do with a classic breakfast item.

Bethanne:  I wanted to just have you explain for a moment, what you mean by the everything bagels of popular fiction, it’s just so perfect

LAURA MILLER:

Laura: I think just that there's everything. You know, like if you have like a contemporary romance, there might be a little bit of intrigue and some obstacles to the couple getting together and then there's like a lot of sex or whatever, and then a happy ending. Um, she would have that. But then she'll have a backstory involving a lot of sort of soap opera and drama and then she’ll have a crazy twist

Along with appealing to people who want heartbreakers, she has a style that draws in people who are fans of multiple genres and want fast turns. Hoover’s favorite ingredients are chaotic romantic attachments, graphic sex scenes, and hard-earned happy endings for the heroines at the center. There are also significant plot beats in her books that take the form of sudden, tragic events. There’s a little something for everyone. 

Bethanne Patrick:

According to Jennie Young, an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, this approach seems to appeal to a new market. 

Jennie Young:

I do sincerely appreciate that Colleen Hoover has gotten a lot of people reading who maybe weren't reading before because she has such a following, and I do think her books are readable in that the plot lines keep moving. Like, I mean, 

Even if I don't particularly like the writing style, I don't have to force myself to keep with the story. I kind of wanna see what happens next. And I think especially when you're talking about young readers, that's a really, really important factor to be able to hit.

Bethanne Patrick:

For younger generations raised on screens of different sizes, styles of reading have changed, as have attention spans. 

TIKTOK MONTAGE:

“I couldn’t put this book down, like, even for five minutes.”

“When I say I gobbled this book up, I mean I read 50 pages on Friday, I started it on Friday, and then yesterday, I sat down to read a few more pages the second time picking this book up and I finished it.”

“I read this book in a day, IN A DAY.”

“I did not put it down until I finished reading it.”

Bethanne Patrick:

But not everyone can appreciate Hoover’s style.

A slew of negative reviews from readers who might consider themselves to be more “high brow” with their literature selections have called Hoover’s writing lazy and full of clichés.

But publishers are happy to keep printing her work because it keeps flying off the shelves.

Laura Miller:

It’s accessible to a lot of people who don’t really care about some of the things that maybe a literary critic like me or you would care about. And publishers have always published for those readers and will continue to do so.

Bethanne Patrick:

Publishers might not have taken a chance on Hoover’s work if she hadn’t self published. She might have had to prove that there was an existing audience for her work. But Jim Milliot From PW argues that Hoover needed mainstream publishing to reach her success.

Jim Milliot:

I don't know if he's turned the tables so much as, because, I mean, she started off self-published and then.. No…  look, self-publishing is a great thing, but you're only gonna get to hit these numbers really if you have the muscle of a Simon and Schuster behind you. So that's been really key.

Bethanne Patrick:

Milliot is right. To get onto the New York Times bestseller list, an author only needs to sell 5,000 copies – still a substantial number, but nowhere near the 14 million copies Hoover would go on to sell last year. 

TODAY: Jenna’s Extended Interview with Colleen Hoover:

“When you first started writing in 2012, could you ever have imagined this?”

“Absolutely not, oh my gosh, no, like, you know, my goal was to - ‘oh I hope I write a book someday’ and that’s how far it went”

Bethanne Patrick:

This brings us to the last key to Hoover’s success. Hoover took advantage of new ways to reach audiences. She writes in a style and about topics an underserved audience wants to devour. But from my perspective, there was one other key to her success - a factor that might be a double edged sword that’s now cutting her. Hoover’s writing has always been controversial to a certain kind of reader. And now she might have gone too far. 

In January, Colleen Hoover made an important announcement to her fans about her most popular book on BookTok. “It Ends With Us,” which she wrote in 2016, had been greenlit for a Hollywood adaptation.

Colleen Hoover’s TikTok:

Hi guys, Colleen Hoover here. Um, we have a cast, and I’m gonna tell you who our Ryle and Lily are.

Bethanne Patrick:

Hoover’s fans seemed excited to learn that the movie got some big stars on board.

With all the excitement surrounding the movie, Colleen Hoover shared with fans that she’d be releasing a coloring book based on her novel. But many fans didn’t take this well.

Because “It Ends With Us” is a book involving domestic violence. 

TikTok:

I’m sorry but Colleen Hoover has officially lost it.

What part of her thought the themes in this book would be best suited to a coloring book? This goes beyond poor taste. And if I wasn’t already not reading her books anymore, this would be the final nail in the coffin.”

Bethanne Patrick:

Given that so much of the story contains graphic mention of the main character’s injury at the hands of her partner, it’s clear why the coloring book struck audiences as insensitive. Hoover made a formal apology via Instagram story in January 2023.

And while some readers defended Hoover, suggesting that she had no part in the idea, the conversations seem to have sparked a secondary discussion surrounding the nature of the books. 

Some stated that they felt the domestic violence in Hoover’s books seemed to romanticize it. 

TIKTOK:

“The “It Ends With Us” relationship, 90 percent of the sex scenes in there are between a woman and her domestic abuser. I think there might be one scene with the actual love interest, which is a total background character throughout. So framing “It Ends With Us” as a spicy book when it’s about domestic abuse is also, like, stomach curdling, like I don’t understand this framing.”

Bethanne Patrick:
​​People were discussing Colleen Hoover's books, online and publicly, which generated more conversation, more eyeballs and ears, and more book sales, which in turn generated more scrutiny and more eyes and more ears. At the end of the day, people were talking about Colleen Hoover and that was a good thing. If using new resources was the first big factor in Hoover’s success, and social media and community is the second big factor in her success, the conversations around controversy is the third. 

CHAPTER THREE: The Dark Side of Colleen Hoover

It’s only natural that a widely successful author garners their fair share of haters. And Hoover’s public acclaim certainly drew ire from hardcore lit-lovers who deem CoHo pop fiction. 

YouTube Colleen Hoover Hates Women:

“What Colleen Hoover has just done is outrageous. Thanks, I hate it.”

Bethanne Patrick:

These were the same readers who called Twilight an insult to literature ten years ago. What rates with the mainstream majority usually doesn’t revolutionize the written word…

But when the criticisms turned to topics of misogyny and abuse, they left me with some concern over why Hoover’s books might have struck so many of the young women on BookTok as “relatable.” 

For a deeper dive into these conversations on the more troubling subject matter in Colleen Hoover’s books, I turned to Jennie Young, again. 

Bethanne: You wrote that we need to stop praising this book, maybe. Because as you said, people are reading it, but because of issues in the book and how it deals with domestic violence. So could you run us through that, please? 

Jennie Young Interview:

Ryle is a neurosurgeon. Uh, they both come from a history of trauma. Lily had an abusive father who was, uh, sexually and physically abusive to her mother and physically abusive to her. 

There are all kinds of red flags about Ry and his propensity toward, uh, violence and having a fiery temper to put, uh, a very weak, um, label on that since at the beginning we don't know how bad it's going to get. Their relationship becomes increasingly abusive from, uh, Ryle being abusive to Lily and, and not in a gray area kind of way. And I don't wanna suggest that there is a gray area of abuse. But was very blatant. We're talking emergency room visits, Lily being rendered unconscious on multiple occasions, having to get stitches, a violent, sexual assault. Pretty serious domestic abuse that is not really in the text or the plot or the characters reacted to at an appropriate level.

Bethanne Patrick:

But maybe the response to the abuse was similar to the response throughout Hoover’s childhood.

Laura Miller found the narrative parallel to be touching.

Laura Miller Interview:

her own mother was in an abusive relationship and she has a afterward or forward, I can't remember what, where she explains that and she explains that she sort of wrote this book to sort of come to terms with, you know, why her own mother found it so hard to get out of this abusive relationship.

Bethanne Patrick:

The end of the book, which – spoiler alert – involves Lily considering divorcing Ryle, does perhaps offer a catharsis for Hoover, whose mother left her father early on in her childhood.

Jennie Young, however, felt that this choice by the character did not redeem the previous abuse and was more in keeping with the bare minimum any parent would do for a child.

Jennie Young Interview:

And over and over again, Lily says some things like I would do whatever it. To break the cycle of abuse. And in my mind, I'm thinking, what did you do exactly at all? Because I'm not seeing a whole lot. And, you know, feeling bad about something does not equate to definitive action to protect a child.

Bethanne Patrick:

As you can see, there’s a lot to debate and deconstruct when it comes to Hoover’s work and that has to be a factor to her success. 

Personally, do I wish Hoover’s characters were handled differently? Yes. 

However, Hoover’s publishers don’t want her to change a thing; she’s too successful, now. While many of the scenarios she depicts are outside the lived experience of many publishing insiders and their authors, Hoover comes from a background in which she never thought she’d be working with, say, a Simon & Schuster. I hope that the book-publishing industry looks at her success and realizes that there’s an audience for the kind of characters and lives that she’s writing about in her books.

Now let's take a step back. How did Hoover find success and is it reproducible?

Hoover was at the right place at the right time. She took advantage of ways to get her book out into the world like self publishing and social media. 

But her other secret weapon is that she writes for people who are like her - people who don’t get published as often.  So there was an underserved market. 

You can disagree with or dislike how she does it - but that sort of disagreement sparks conversations which creates hashtags which creates new readers. 

It's hard to be at the right place at the right time. But you can take advantage of new resources, new communities, and you can write the books you wish you were reading. And if that's a perspective that's under-represented, especially if it's sexy, dramatic and controversial, you’ve got a better chance of announcing the actors depicting your book in the movie adaptation.

For now, however, the real story is Hoover’s unprecedented success as a self-published author who jumped the queue to being traditionally published and marketed. Can other authors repeat that success, or is Colleen Hoover a maverick whose phenomenal track record will be just that – a phenomenon?

Missing Pages is a Podglomerate Original, Produced, mixed, and mastered by Chris Boniello with additional production and editing by Jordan Aaron.

This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz

This episode was written by Lauren Delisle

Marketing by Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Vannessa Ullman, and Annabella Pena. 

Art by Tom Grillo. Produced and Hosted by me, Bethanne Patrick. Original music composed and performed by Hashem Assadullahi, additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. 

Executive Produced by Jeff Umbro and the Podglomerate.

Special thanks to Dan Christo, Matt Keeley, Grant Irving from Mutual Friends Media, Laura Miller, Jim Milliot, and Jennie Young. 

You can learn more about Missing Pages at the podglomerate dot com, on twitter at miss pages pod and on Instagram at missing pages pod, or you can email us at missing pages at the podglomerate dot com. If you liked what you heard today, please let your friends and family know and suggest an episode for them to listen to.