What Counts as a Bestseller?(publicbooks.org)
publicbooks.org
What Counts as a Bestseller?
https://www.publicbooks.org/what-counts-as-a-bestseller/
22 comments
I wrote a book, Computer Engineering for Babies. I’ve sold about 25k copies in the last 12 months, but I don’t have a publisher, a marketing team, or even an Amazon listing. I talked to a publisher once, they told me if you sell 10k books you can easily be classified as a best seller. But The NY Times, or anyone else, doesn’t care about some guy selling baby books out of his living room, and I don’t care enough about awards to try chasing them.
> I don’t care enough about awards to try chasing them.
It's great if you're satisfied selling what you're selling, but placement on the NYT list is more than just an award, it's a huge marketing opportunity. Getting on the list could easily 5x your sales and revenue, and have publishers and booksellers knocking on your door instead of other way around.
It's great if you're satisfied selling what you're selling, but placement on the NYT list is more than just an award, it's a huge marketing opportunity. Getting on the list could easily 5x your sales and revenue, and have publishers and booksellers knocking on your door instead of other way around.
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The "best selling" lists have some pretty "strict" criteria, and they're all kind of lame, even if arguably some are there to prevent "gaming" the system.
And "best selling" as a substitute for quality doesn't hold that well, either.
And "best selling" as a substitute for quality doesn't hold that well, either.
"Best selling" by the NYT has its own algorithm which weighs audiobooks, ebooks, indie vs big store sales, etc. all differently. Additionally I would suspect selling children's books would have to compete with school-sized purchases. 25k over a year is great, but in the realm of children's books you're dealing with Scholastic magazines book hawking to every school in the nation.
> I don’t have a publisher, a marketing team, or even an Amazon listing
Interesting, how do get them manufactured? I guess there are printing companies that operate separately from publishers?
Interesting, how do get them manufactured? I guess there are printing companies that operate separately from publishers?
There are countless self publishing companies, and while idk if it's still active, even Amazon had a try at this.
Yes, Amazon still runs theirs. It's part of the KDP program now.
lulu.com is another relatively big one. (They have a nice service, Lulu Xpress, if you just want to print copies for personal use.)
And then there is the other monolith, IngramSpark.
lulu.com is another relatively big one. (They have a nice service, Lulu Xpress, if you just want to print copies for personal use.)
And then there is the other monolith, IngramSpark.
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I just got my copy a few weeks ago! My 14 month old loves it, though she hasn’t yet figured out the AND gate yet. :)
Good work. How did you market your book?
Thanks! At first it was just a couple posts on Reddit and HN,m. Every once in a while someone will share it on Twitter or something and it will blow up for a few days. I’m spending a few hundred dollars a day on paid ads right now, but even that ebbs and flows on wether it’s profitable.
> HN,m
what's the 'm' ? typo?
what's the 'm' ? typo?
For whatever its worth...
I wrote a fairly technical book on a niche engineering subject which I published exclusively on Amazon. (My company covered the expenses and set up an ISBN, etc.) In its first month, it sold about 200 copies, was the #1 book in all 3 of its categories, got an orange "best seller" tag, and had an overall Amazon rank of roughly 15,000. Since then, it has sold anywhere from 5-30 copies per month, it is ranked ~15-40 in its categories, and its overall sales rank is anywhere from 200k to 1.3M. (The Kindle ranking is usually closer to 400k, whereas the print ranking is closer to 700k-1M, despite the fact that our sales ratio is at least 3:1 in favor of print.)
It always surprises me to see professional fiction authors with books ranked >1M on Amazon, as that implies that they're selling single-digit copies per month.
As an aside, I know that there are some technical books -- usually published by Elsevier or Springer -- that have never sold _any_ copies on Amazon. I believe that they're marketed almost exclusively to University libraries. I really don't understand their business model, though, nor the incentives for their authors and editorial staff. For e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/Biocontrol-Agents-Secondary-Metabolit...
I wrote a fairly technical book on a niche engineering subject which I published exclusively on Amazon. (My company covered the expenses and set up an ISBN, etc.) In its first month, it sold about 200 copies, was the #1 book in all 3 of its categories, got an orange "best seller" tag, and had an overall Amazon rank of roughly 15,000. Since then, it has sold anywhere from 5-30 copies per month, it is ranked ~15-40 in its categories, and its overall sales rank is anywhere from 200k to 1.3M. (The Kindle ranking is usually closer to 400k, whereas the print ranking is closer to 700k-1M, despite the fact that our sales ratio is at least 3:1 in favor of print.)
It always surprises me to see professional fiction authors with books ranked >1M on Amazon, as that implies that they're selling single-digit copies per month.
As an aside, I know that there are some technical books -- usually published by Elsevier or Springer -- that have never sold _any_ copies on Amazon. I believe that they're marketed almost exclusively to University libraries. I really don't understand their business model, though, nor the incentives for their authors and editorial staff. For e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/Biocontrol-Agents-Secondary-Metabolit...
> It always surprises me to see professional fiction author with books ranked >1M on Amazon, as that implies that they're selling single-digit copies per month.
As a decidedly non-professional self-published writer, at present my two novels so far are around the 1M ranking on amazon.com and ~270k on amazon.co.uk... I'm above the single-digit copies per month for them, but not a whole lot, so can vouch that your numbers are pretty reasonable.
But with respect to being surprised, recent numbers from the UK - I wish I remembered the source, suggests the average income for authors from their writing is around ~13k/year, while average household income for writers was ~80k/year.
In other words, even most "professional" traditionally published authors are either doing it as a second job or has a partner in a high paid job. Writing is very much a "job" that for most people is a passion that may or may not even break even, and where only a tiny proportion of writers ever get to the point of making a living.
Part of that is building up back catalog, and building up an audience. I recall Charles Stross, to take someone who is living of it now, mentioned on Twitter a while back that it took him about a decade before he made 5k in a single year from his writing.
To take a more extreme example of this, Georges Simenon (Maigret etc.) at one point sold only ca. 8k copies per new novel from his French publisher. He was still wealthy, but because of the sheer number of novels (he wrote several hundred), number of translations and number of adaptations, but each new novel added just a trickle and mostly served to keep interest up.
A Norwegian author, Kjell Hallbing, mostly writing as Louis Masterson, sold 20 million books before he died, yet all but his last 6 or so sold in tiny numbers[1] But he wrote well over a hundred novels, and they were translated to more than 20 languages before he died (but not to English; the first English translation came years after he died, and they're not great).
[1] The last six represented a return of his most popular series after a multi-year hiatus - his publisher was mocked when they printed a first edition of 100k for the Norwegian market, but it sold out in no-time; ~30 years of accumulating an audience and building nostalgia among people who mostly will have read just a small portion of his books has an effect...
As a decidedly non-professional self-published writer, at present my two novels so far are around the 1M ranking on amazon.com and ~270k on amazon.co.uk... I'm above the single-digit copies per month for them, but not a whole lot, so can vouch that your numbers are pretty reasonable.
But with respect to being surprised, recent numbers from the UK - I wish I remembered the source, suggests the average income for authors from their writing is around ~13k/year, while average household income for writers was ~80k/year.
In other words, even most "professional" traditionally published authors are either doing it as a second job or has a partner in a high paid job. Writing is very much a "job" that for most people is a passion that may or may not even break even, and where only a tiny proportion of writers ever get to the point of making a living.
Part of that is building up back catalog, and building up an audience. I recall Charles Stross, to take someone who is living of it now, mentioned on Twitter a while back that it took him about a decade before he made 5k in a single year from his writing.
To take a more extreme example of this, Georges Simenon (Maigret etc.) at one point sold only ca. 8k copies per new novel from his French publisher. He was still wealthy, but because of the sheer number of novels (he wrote several hundred), number of translations and number of adaptations, but each new novel added just a trickle and mostly served to keep interest up.
A Norwegian author, Kjell Hallbing, mostly writing as Louis Masterson, sold 20 million books before he died, yet all but his last 6 or so sold in tiny numbers[1] But he wrote well over a hundred novels, and they were translated to more than 20 languages before he died (but not to English; the first English translation came years after he died, and they're not great).
[1] The last six represented a return of his most popular series after a multi-year hiatus - his publisher was mocked when they printed a first edition of 100k for the Norwegian market, but it sold out in no-time; ~30 years of accumulating an audience and building nostalgia among people who mostly will have read just a small portion of his books has an effect...
> I really don't understand their business model, though, nor the incentives for their authors and editorial staff
I believe the business model is "sell a few thousand expensive hardbacks to university libraries to cover publishing costs". Authors tend not to make any money (unless they book happens to be particularly successful, which happens rarely), and are incentivised by the desire to spread knowledge. Many are academics who are paid by their employers to write books amongst other activities.
I believe the business model is "sell a few thousand expensive hardbacks to university libraries to cover publishing costs". Authors tend not to make any money (unless they book happens to be particularly successful, which happens rarely), and are incentivised by the desire to spread knowledge. Many are academics who are paid by their employers to write books amongst other activities.
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Seems like every sellout (pun?) TV news personality who writes a book with their face on a giant hardback cover and the last sentence of the book is the title (i.e. "and that truly was _the summer of our dreams_.", "So now we have _the conscience of a nation_", and so on) is deemed a NYT Bestseller. And it's so quick that that credential is printed on the first edition's cover!
I'm sure they list a lot of great books, but if you make it on there you'll be in some pretty shitty company at the NYT Bestsellers gala.
I'm sure they list a lot of great books, but if you make it on there you'll be in some pretty shitty company at the NYT Bestsellers gala.
Interesting that they don't mention amazon bestseller lists. I believe the amazon lists are purely mathematical. (Why do I believe this? Because I haven't heard any author complaining about it. Whereas everything in the post about NYT is common knowledge. )
It's interesting the the article thus shows the same kind of selection bias that they were complaining about.
> So, what, then, is a bestseller? It seems like the answer should be simple—it’s just a book that sold the best!
This cannot be emphasized enough. Best sellers are either great books and/or they are well marketed ones.
This cannot be emphasized enough. Best sellers are either great books and/or they are well marketed ones.