Comments on: Bestseller Lists Demystified: Readers, We Are Following the Wrong Leaders

By: Jackie Kessler - Cat and Muse

Jackie Kessler - Cat and Muse — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:21:32 +0000

[...] My Dear Creator was hanging out at Dear Author, where there’s a terrific post about what it means to be a bestselling author. Me, I’d always thought to be a bestseller, you had to make a deal with You Know Who. (Hey, I drink the company Kool-Aid, you know?) Turns out, that’s not the case. Check out the post. [...]

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:19:42 +0000

Is it on the Children’s list because it wasn’t on the usatoday top 150.

By: May

May — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:17:25 +0000

Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely is 8th on the July 1st NYT list. :)

By: Shelly @ Bewitched

Shelly @ Bewitched — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:51:47 +0000

I don’t think I pay much attention to the “lists.” I know in our store we may start out with what’s on a list but then as stuff sells, we replace it with books that we have a large quantity of. :) So we’re probably misleading the public. LOL I am intrigued by your choices though.

By: MKeeton Books

MKeeton Books — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:04:00 +0000

[quote comment="30223"]

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. :)

By: HelenKay

HelenKay — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:01:03 +0000

Jane – Mine comes out in 2007 (June 26th, in case anyone is wondering). I’ll volutneer if you want to try it.

By: sherry thomas

sherry thomas — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:04:37 +0000

Darn! Do me for Round 2 then. You have to experiment several times to know if the result is reliable and repeatable. :-)

By: Ilona

Ilona — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:39:08 +0000

I made Jane’s Bestseller List, I made Jane’s Bestseller List!

: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.

By: MKeeton Books

MKeeton Books — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:28:13 +0000

Thanks for the information, this is good to know. This sheds a whole new light on the term “best Seller”.

By: Phyl

Phyl — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:01:00 +0000

Oh, I wish it could be Sherry’s book. I’d be BEGGING to be one of the 20 for that!