Bestselling author Berry shares secrets of writing success at Hoover library

Bestselling author Steve Berry told a crowd at the Hoover Public Library Friday night the secrets of what it takes to sell 25 million books in 52 countries — patience, persistence, discipline and a little bit of fortune.

Berry, a regular at the top of The New York Times, USA Today and Indie bestseller lists who has written 21 novels and 11 e-book originals, was the keynote speaker for the 2022 Southern Voices Festival in Hoover.

But fame and fortune didn’t come quickly or easily for Berry, he told a crowd of about 150 people in the Hoover Library Theatre Friday night.

Berry, who formerly was a lawyer by trade, first decided to write a novel in 1990. Over the next 12 years, he wrote eight manuscripts, he said. The first three were long and awful, and then after finding an agent, he had the next five manuscripts rejected 85 times by the 17 publishing houses in New York, he said.

One of his big problems was that he writes novels with action, history, secrets and conspiracies, which at one time were called spy novels, he said.

In 1990, the Berlin Wall was coming down and the Soviet Union was falling apart.

“The entire genre of the spy novel died,” he said. “By the mid ‘90s, it was gone. By 2000, it was dead, buried and degrading and forgotten.”

But in May 2002, Ballantine Books bought the rights to “The Amber Room,” Berry’s first novel to be published.

About the same time, a little-known author by the name of Dan Brown hit the jackpot with a novel called “The Da Vinci Code,” which became an international bestseller.

Brown gave Berry a blurb review for his book, saying that “The Amber Room” was “my kind of thriller — a globe-trotting treasure hunt packed with exotic locales, sumptuous art and ruthless villains” and said “Berry writes with the self-assured style of a veteran.”

Berry said he was able to ride Brown’s coattails, got better with his next two novels and had his own breakthrough hit with “The Templar Legacy.” It was the first of 16 novels featuring a character named Cotton Malone, a retired U.S. spy who got called back into the cloak-and-dagger world.

“Since then, it’s sort of grown and grown and grown,” Berry said. “It’s just amazing. You’ve got to pinch yourself all the time that that can happen. I really don’t know anything about writing, but I’m a world-class expert about rejection. But I didn’t quit. I stayed around.”

DISCIPLINE AND CONSISTENCY

Berry also learned to be disciplined with his writing. Even when he was getting rejections, Berry said he tried to keep writing 1,000 words a day. When he was still working as a lawyer, he would get to the office early and do his writing from 6:30 to 9 a.m. before others arrived.

Still to this day, he tries to spend about six hours each weekday writing at least 1,000 words, and he does research in the afternoons. Writing on the weekend is optional, he said.

He has to stay diligent because he’s contracted to put out a book each year, he said. When he’s about halfway through with a book, he begins his research for the next one, he said.

Because his novels are very much historically based, he typically uses research from 300 to 400 books to write each novel, he said. About 90% of his novels are based on actual history, he said.

“I keep my books about as close to reality as I can,” he said. But “I have to trip ‘em up because it’s a novel.”

He usually includes a writer’s note at the end of the novel to explain any historical inaccuracies, but he warned the audience Friday night not to read the notes before they read the books.

Berry recently switched from Macmillan Publishers to Grand Central Publishing and, with the switch, is taking a one-year break from his Cotton Malone character and introducing a new character called Nicholas Lee, a United Nations investigator whose job is to protect the world’s cultural artifacts.

“I’m hoping that people like him,” Berry said. “He’s different than Cotton, but he’s the same.”

Berry’s next book, called “The Omega Factor,” is due out June 7. It still has the action, history, secrets and conspiracies, but with different characters, backgrounds and motivations, he said.

But fans of Cotton Malone shouldn’t worry, Berry said. He’s not going away; he’s just on vacation. More books with Malone are in the works, Berry said.

VOICE IN YOUR HEAD

When he’s asked why he writes, Berry said he does it because he has to do it.

“The reason you have to is that little voice in your head,” he said. “If you sit down and you write each day, the little voice will hush, and if you don’t, it will nag you to death.”

Berry said he ignored that voice in his head for 10 years but finally gave in. He also used writing as an escape from his work as a lawyer, where he dealt with the troubles of 10,000 divorce cases and criminal defense work, he said.

Writers are born with that voice in their head, but they’re not born as writers, Berry said. “You have to learn the craft,” he said. “Writing is hard. It’s actually difficult.”

Berry spoke just about 15 minutes with general remarks Friday night. He then spent another 40 minutes answering questions from the audience, saying he preferred to talk about things that interest them.

Audience members quizzed him on topics such as where he got his love for history (his father and Hardy Boys books is where it began), how he comes up with a plot, why he changed publishers and agents, how much travel he does for research and how he works with co-authors.

One audience member asked him if his legal training helped him as a writer, and Berry was quick to answer no.

“As lawyers, we’re taught to write a certain way — say something over and over and over until it’s true or at least until I convince you it’s true,” he said. “In fiction, that is the kiss of death. The object of legal writing is to persuade you. The object of fiction writing is to entertain you. … It took me about six years to get the legal writing out of my writing.”

Greg and Beth Smith, two audience members from Opelika, said they originally bought tickets to see Berry when he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at Southern Voices in 2018 but came down with the flu just before the festival and had to cancel his appearance.

So when they heard he was scheduled again this year, they hopped at the chance to hear him.

Greg Smith, who said he got turned onto Berry about 2010 and since has read all of his books, said his talk Friday night was fantastic.

“It’s amazing how it only takes one year [to write a book],” Smith said. “It would take me four years.”

Lanier Isom, a writer from Mountain Brook who co-wrote a biography and memoir on Lilly Ledbetter, said she also thought Berry’s talk was fabulous.

“He wrote eight manuscripts in 12 years and never gave up and kept writing because of that voice in his head,” Isom said. “As a writer, I understand that.”

She also appreciates his comments about writing being a discipline but also having some serendipity to it, she said. “There’s also a magic to it that you can’t manufacture,” she said.

The Southern Voices Festival continues Saturday with six other award-winning authors scheduled to speak in the Hoover Library Theatre from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Included in the lineup are Jason Mott (who won the National Book Award for fiction in November), Jennifer Egan, Rachel Hawkins, Signe Pike, Peter Swanson and Kevin Wilson.

The only hiccup in the lineup is that Swanson was stranded in Boston due to a snowstorm and will have to make his appearance by Zoom, said Carrie Steinmehl, chairwoman for the festival.

This will be the first time an author has spoken via videoconference at Southern Voices, she said.

Read more about each of those authors here.