The more I become familiar with the business of publishing, the less sense it makes.[/quote]
That’s not good, I’m new to this and I can’t make any sense of that. If it gets an worse I’m in trouble. :)

:dance-dance:

:dance-dance:

On a serious note, excellent post. I love the line about measuring velocity. It’s awesome, because it captures the essence of the bestseller perfectly.

Velocity is so easily altered. When Magic Bites was released, it didn’t do that well in the first week, but did slightly better in the second week. I thought that was rather odd, but it was explained to me that I, accidentally, hit the same release window as the 4 other paranormal/urban fantasy books. So I picked up a lot of “rebound” readers, who have bought their first pick and came back to the store looking for something similar. Which shows how easily sales rank in general can be manipulated by all sorts of circumstances.

Another interesting thing: the best advertisement for the book is the presence of copies in the store. While a book with a larger print run isn’t guaranteed to do better than a book with a smaller print run, it helps. Science fiction and fantasy genre print runs tend to be smallish for first time authors, around 12-17K, while first time paranormal romance author can hit 2, 3, 5 times that number. Truth is, SF/F has a much smaller audience than romance. Suppose there is a book that straddles the line between being a Fantasy and a Paranormal Romance. It can easily hit all sorts of bestseller rank on SF/F bestseller list, while doing poorly among other romances.

The more I become familiar with the business of publishing, the less sense it makes.

Sherry

I can see how it could give you job security but it’s still a slightly hallow one. But jobs are jobs. As a reader though it’s just slightly irritating that I look at various book fronts and see this huge title and all I can think of is “Really? So what week did you shine?”

“List 10 books (not authors) that should be bestsellers but aren't (or aren't likely to be).”

Um, since some of those “exalted” best seller lists don’t make a lick of sense, how would I know who/what actually IS a best seller?

Like alot of the others that commented, I don’t pay much attention to those best seller lists. But I will admit that, while browsing for books, I will stop at one labeled “From Best Selling Author” more often than I will another unfamiliar author’s books. It’s another selling tool like the cover design, title, author recommendations or review blurbs.

Although, if I was an author, it would give me some way cool bragging rights! *g*

Oh, I’d love doing this if you let authors be readers, too, heh!

Thomas’ excerpt is a great example of how excerpts can really whet the appetite. Her ending is so grand.

I think it would be fun for the community of bloggers to do a blogging experiment about a book. I think a midlist or debut author would be great for this. Any suggestions folks? I think it would have to be a paperback. Maybe if I got 20 bloggers signed up, I could see if a publisher would be interested in donating the books?

But by way of example, the community of readers that we have here, loosely knit through various blogs in addition to DA, buzzed about The Raven Prince. Long after it was released many of us were buying/borrowing it. We’d have had no affect on it’s bestseller status, but we might have had one on its cumulative total. I have no idea how big the DA “community” is, but I think it would be both informative and entertaining to know that 20 of us read Book XYZ this month. The book may or may not be tied to a particular release date.

P.S. I really hate you, Jane for that link to Sherry Thomas’ book. I read the excerpt and am totally frustrated that I have to wait 9 months and 20 days for the rest of it!