No publicity, no marketing — how did a 69-year-old Georgian’s debut novel start selling 1,000 copies a day?...
With virtually no marketing or social media presence, “Theo of Golden” became a blockbuster.
Last spring, word started to percolate in the publishing industry about “the white book” — a self-published novel with a stark, bright cover that was fast becoming one of the biggest sellers of the year. No one knew exactly how. “Theo of Golden” had limited distribution, and virtually no publicity or marketing campaign. Its author, Allen Levi, lived alone on 1,600 acres of family land — mostly pine trees — in Georgia, where he kept honeybees and a blog, and posted homespun music videos. That was about the extent of his social media footprint. “I’m writing a book, and it’s making me crazy,” Levi, 69, sang in one clip. “I’m writing a book, and I’m losing my mind.”
The novel tells the story of an elderly stranger, Theo, who shows up one day in the small city of Golden. Struck by the pencil portraits displayed in a local coffee shop, he buys the whole lot, aiming to give all 92 of them to their subjects. In doing so, he quietly changes his newfound community. Though Levi, in conversation, is more likely to bring up Wendell Berry or David Brooks, his narrative recalls writers such as Paulo Coelho, Matt Haig and Mitch Albom; it has a soft-lit, allegorical quality, designed to inspire awe at life’s forking paths. And yet, he also put in a late-breaking plot turn so brutal, anguished readers grill him about it at all public appearances.
How a nearly 70-year-old debut novelist published 2025’s breakout hit
John Updike Wrote It All Down
His letters are almost exhaustive accounts of daily life—every good meal, every conversation, every dalliance.
Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life. “A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. A thin desire is one that doesn’t.”
Bestselling in ... Ireland, 2025
In the Irish Times Martin Doyle reports on the bestselling books in Ireland in 2025, in The Let Them Theory is Ireland's bestselling book of 2025.
That top-selling book -- see, for example, the Hay House publicity page -- sold ... 38,885 copies.
25 best books of the century ?
There's another 'The 25 best books of the century so far'-list out -- this one (possibly registration-requiring) at The Observer.
Good to see that twenty-first-century classic The Odyssey, by Homer, make the list ..... (They mean a specific translation, of course .....)
It is a ... wide-ranging selection ..... From London Orbitalto 2666 to The Amber Spyglass
At The Guardian Alex Clark profiles the author, in ‘There’s a sense of our freedoms becoming vulnerable’: novelist Alan Hollinghurst.
Yet-To-Be-Published “Tupperware Erotica” Novel Sparks Bidding War For TV Rights
The January-February issue of World Literature Today is now available, with a focus on: 'NSK Neustadt Prize Laureate Cherie Dimaline'.
As always: check out the extensive book review section.
Abdulrazak Gurnah profile
At The Phoenix Zephyr Weinreich reports on Abdulrazak Gurnah's recent visit to Swarthmore, in Nobel Prize Winner in Literature Speaks on Campus.
Among his comments:
One of the unexpected boons of going to England was that there were libraries and bookshops everywhere. It was then that I began to read just about everything I could find. And this reading absolutely energized my writing.
In The Guardian Emma Loffhagen wonders: Are we falling out of love with nonfiction ?
As a not-great-fan of most popular non-fiction I'm just wondering: what took so long ?
(It's been interesting to see the reactions to the recent Oliver Sacks revelations. I've always been near-allergic to and deeply suspicious of 'anecdotal' non-fiction (which so much of the popular stuff is) and so I never took to Sacks' writing. I know people are suckers for this sort of 'personal' stuff, and I can see the appeal -- but prefer to make a wide berth around it.
Fiction, folks, fiction, that's the ticket; that's always been the ticket -- or, if you must: real non-fiction: hard numbers, abstract thought, reproducible evidence (rather than single-case studies), real scholarship.)
That Late Death Took All My Heart for Speech'
I’m not by nature a brooder. My brother died sixteen months ago yesterday, enough time for his death to have taken its place in the region of memory I think of as a reliquary. Precious but not to be fiddled with too often. On Tuesday at Kaboom Books here in Houston I was talking to the owner, John Dillman. For some reason the topic was the late poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I told John a friend and I cut school in the spring of our senior year in high school to attend the first Earth Day – April 22, 1970. In a downtown church, Ferlinghetti spoke and read some poems, of which I remember nothing.
Memory, of course, is a series of linkages. My talk with John reminded me that my brother once had a cat he named Lawrence Ferlingkitty, which I hadn’t thought about in years. Coupled with the nearness of Christmas another memory returned. My mother was a notoriously indifferent housekeeper. Clutter accumulated on every horizontal surface. We even felt sorry for the Christmas tree, freighted with too many ornaments, too much tinsel. One year, my brother and I bought a sack of hotdog buns and hung them all from the tree without telling anyone. No one noticed, not parents or visitors, so it became an annual tradition. That may be my favorite memory of my brother. The final stanza of Yeats’ “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory”:
“I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved
Or boyish intellect approved,
With some appropriate commentary on each;
Until imagination brought
A fitter welcome; but a thought
Of that late death took all my heart for speech.”
