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Write a book that people want to read instead of a book that you think people ought to read, and you just might sell a lot of books. I don't see anything shocking about the Silmarillion being the #1 book of 1978. Lord of the Rings sold more than 150,000,000 copies and the Hobbit sold more than 100,000,000 copies. LotR has been sneered at for quite a long time, but in recent years has gained grudging acceptance as being a worthwhile book. If there were a turning point, it might have been Airport in 1968, a fairly standard thriller. It's also not terribly surprising that the novelization of Return of the Jedi was the best-selling book in 1983, that's when the movie came out, and it was an enormous blockbuster.
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