How “The Girl on the Train” Became a Runaway Success

The Girl on the Train is the bullet train of books. But what catapulted the book into New York Times bestseller status so quickly? What made it the kind of debut book sales story the industry sees only every few years? With the book passing the epic 3 million copies sold milestone, we thought it was a good time to dig into the data on Goodreads to find out.

The first thing we discovered is that this is a story of how the passion of influential readers helped build that all-important early buzz.