Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

It was the earliest demonstration of a phenomenon popularized by-and now named for-James Surowiecki's bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds. Aggregating the judgment of many consistently beats the accuracy of the average member of the group, and is often as startlingly accurate as Galton's weight-guessers.

These books can't possibly compete with centuries of established history, especially when that history is endorsed by the ultimate bestseller of all time.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Beyond that I seem to be compelled to write science fiction rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature both fiction and nonfiction.