New York Times Bestselling Authors: Ages, an additional note.

I haven't time to compose a full post.

I wanted to add a bit of perspective to my previous post. While the average age of the author whose books were number #1 on the adult fiction bestseller list was 54 years, this number included all works by a given author. In terms of the age when the bestselling author first made it to number one on the list, the average age dropped, but not by much, to 48.1 years old.

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New York Times Bestsellers: Ages of Authors

One aspect of literature that fascinates me is the fact that it celebrates accumulated wisdom. Authors often bloom in their middle and senior years. 

I examined the ages at which the authors had their bestsellers. To simplify the process I subtracted birth year from year initially appearing on the bestseller list rather than seeking out birthdate versus list date.

A special award goes to J.R.R. Tolkien who, 34 years after dying at age 81, had the novel The Children of Húrin rise to the number one position on the bestseller list, 115 years after his birth.

Another remarkable story is that of Helen Hooven Santmyer. In the 1910s, she was a suffragette and in the 1920s, an Oxford scholar. For the bulk of her professional life she worked as a librarian in Dayton, Ohio. At age 86, and in failing health, she published her 1200 page epic, "...And the Ladies of the Club." It sold several hundred copies, languishing in obscurity for two years until it got noticed. In 1984 it was selected as a Book of the Month, and rose to the number one position on the New York Times Bestsellers List where it stayed for seven weeks.

Eleven novels reaching the number one spot on the New York Times Adult Fiction Bestseller list between 1960 and 2015 were by authors over the age of 80. Another 38 were by authors between 70 and 79 and 133 novels were by authors between 60 and 69. The average age was 54.1 and the median 54.

On the other extreme, two novels were by authors in their twenties. Rachel Van Dyken with her novel The Bet, owns the position as the youngest.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of one novel, A Predatory Mind (2013) from Loose Leaves Publishing. His mystery, Never Kill A Friend, will be available June 15th from Ransom Note Press. The sequel to A Predatory Mind is set to come out later this year.

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The Case of the Middle-Aged Author - Youth's Revenge

Cold Youth Soup.

In a previous post regarding the list of the Top 100 Mystery Novels assembled by the British Crime Writers' Association (CWA, 1990), I examined the ages of the authors when they wrote their celebrated works. In that analysis, I emphasized the success of middle-aged authors. The average age was 44 and, in deference to the elderly, the extreme age was 69. Furthermore, some of these authors continued to write thrilling mysteries through their eighties and into their nineties.

That previous post: The Case of the Middle-Aged Authors

However, to quote someone who must have been very confused when they said it, youth must be served and they are a dish best served cold. Youth are vichyssoise.

Another way to look at the numbers is to examine the median age (the midpoint between high and low) and the mode (the most frequent occurrence). These can tell you something average won't tell you, something which that number is hiding. While the average of 44 is bumped up by those twenty years older, those authors who are in their thirties can not have their influence lowered by authors in their teens and preteens. In other words, the peak production of these authors lives as measured by having an entry on the CWA list ranges from 23 to 69, not over the whole of their lives.

Let's add in the Mystery Writers of America (1995) and Mystery Writers of Japan (1985 and 2012) lists and see how the ages string out.

Ages:     Mean     Median    Mode   Range
CWA       43.5       42       46    23-69
MWA       43.0       40       34    25-79
MWJ '85   40.8       40       36    25-70
MWJ '12   41.5       40       36    23-60

Here the thirties fair better. The ages can be represented graphically.

The individual bars represent the number of authors who fit in the specified age range (e.g. 30s). In each case, twenties plus thirties have more authors than do the forties.

The MWJ lists are skewed by the fact that they loved the early Ellery Queen (5 entries from their twenties, 9 overall). Perhaps the takeaway message is good news: you can succeed old or young.

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