Success in publishing is about a lot of things. Sales, of course. Staying power. And the business of words.We’ve asked some of our favorite contemporary authors to share the numbers they think about as they write — how they infuse the economic world around them into storytelling.

Here’s a number for you: 78.

That’s how many weeks author Gillian Flynn‘s book, “Gone Girl“, has been on the New York Times bestseller list.

Flynn started writing her smash-hit of a novel at the height of the Recession. She had just lost her job at a magazine, and she found herself intrigued by what it meant to lose a job. Her main characters — Nick and Amy — wrestle with the economy in the most personal of ways.

“I wanted to explore what it meant to lose a job, what that meant to people of our age, people in their late 30s,” Flynn says. “I had Nick and Amy, two people who had always thought their jobs would be very safe. And then, to have that taken away from them…to be forced to reinvent themselves a little bit. What that meant to them, what that meant to their marriage.”

Listen to the full commentary in the audio player above.