Which One is Your Best?

Being the festive season, I’ve been out a lot at the kind of gatherings where you make small talk with strangers and new acquaintances. It’s pretty common in the course of small talk for the conversation to turn to how we spend our days. When I say I’m an author, usually about half of the people in any given group will have read at least one of my books in the past and the other half will have never heard of me, which is totally fine—I’m still constantly amazed to discover how many people have actually read my books. Some of the non-readers will then often say they want to try one of my books now they’ve met me. And their next question usually is: which one is your best?

So, what answer do I give? Which of my books do I choose over the rest to be given the title of “The Best”?

Biggest Selling? Highest Rating?

In truth, I usually just give them the name of my most recently published book, because that’s always going to be the one that’s easiest to find in a bookshop. And the reason I do that is because I have no idea how to answer that question. It really depends on what metrics you use to determine “bestness”.

The Paris Seamstress is by far my biggest selling book. Who knows why? I don’t. But if you look at the ratings of my eight historical novels on Goodreads, you’ll see The Paris Seamstress has an average of 4.10 stars out of 5. That’s my second-lowest average. So, it’s the biggest selling, but not the best-rated. That honor goes to The Paris Secret, which has a 4.47 star average, an average that still surprises me to this day. Not because I don’t think it’s a good book! But because it’s actually pretty hard to maintain an average rating on Goodreads anywhere near that level once your book is reviewed by more than 1,000 people.