Is it a trope that...

[VisitasKeat]

That a novel be set in New York for it to become a bestseller?

Or, is this genre dependent?

My current novel, WIP, is set in France.

[David VanDyke]

I don't think it matters terribly much. There might be some bias when we're talking about the NYT bestseller list, because the NYT curates its list to a certain extent, but the general public probably doesn't care too much.

[LilyBLily]

If you mean The Great American Novel, wouldn't setting it in Hemingway's Paris be completely apropos? Or anybody else's self-referential Paris, for that matter?

I suspect that an urban experience is a draw for the critics, who mostly seem to be urbanized or urban-focused people even if they live in suburbs.

[Bill Hiatt]

It depends on the genre. I was just reminded in another thread that horror stories are often set in small towns.

I live in the LA area, but I read books with all kinds of settings. What the setting is doesn't affect my feelings about a book much one way or the other as long as the setting is appropriate to the story.

[PJ Post]

Bestseller locations move around like cool pop music scenes: first it's NY, then it's Athens, Georgia - LA, Chicago, Seattle and finally the internet. Same thing for books.

[RiverRun]

One of my favorite reads last year was an NYT bestseller and set in smalltown Minnesota. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.

[CoraBuhlert]

No, your book does not have to be set in New York City to be successful. There are bestselling books set in all sorts of locations all over this world and any other.

That said, for international success it does help if a book is set in a recognisable and well known location. Everybody knows where New York City or Paris or London is and has some kind of image, no matter how inaccurate, of that location in their head. Meanwhile, hardly anybody knows where Dogpoo, Nebraska, is (probably because I just made the town up) and what it looks like. Of course, you can still set your novel in Dogpoo, Nebraska, but you'll have to do more work to make your setting come to life in people's minds.

There is a big tradition of German regional crime fiction and there are crime novels (and movies and TV shows) set in almost every part of the country. However, the ones that get translated and find international success are set in Berlin, Berlin and more Berlin. Because international readers likely have no idea what East Frisia or the Allgäu or the Eifel, to take three popular locations for regional crime fiction, are like, but they have some kind of idea what Berlin is like.