How the vibes economy gave rise to the book sommelier

The Correspondent did not have the makings of a bestseller: the slow-burn novel told in the form of letters by a 73-year-old protagonist was certainly deftly crafted by its author, Virginia Evans, but lacked the formula of today’s literary hits. It’s not a tradwife comeuppance story, or a sexy romp in a hockey rink locker room. It wasn’t anointed by Reese Witherspoon’s book club (in fact, it was turned down), or optioned for a film by Anne Hathaway. And yet a hit is exactly what it became. The Correspondent made the New York Times bestseller list and won its author the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. How?

Credit is due, largely, to booksellers. “The indie bookstores loved it, and the sellers started pressing it into people’s hands,” says Hilary McMahon, Evans’ literary agent. “They can be so essential to a book's success by cutting through the noise and the hype,” she adds. Booksellers working at indie stores have become quiet kingmakers of the literary world, with an ability to change an author’s career trajectory with something as simple as a staff pick or a book club. They are the sommeliers of publishing: professionals with great taste informed by passion and academic-grade expertise. Their rise says as much about how we spend as how we read.