Selling Books

Your Guide to Writing, Publishing and Marketing Books and Ebooks

  • Blog
  • Free Newsletter
You are here: Home / Book Business / What Makes a Best Seller?

What Makes a Best Seller?

December 9, 2013 by Kate Knapp

According to Merriam-Webster, a best seller is an article (as a book) whose sales are among the highest of its class. Often, best sellers are broken into categories based on genre (nonfiction, fiction, cookbooks, business).

The most recognized best seller list is the New York Times Best Sellers list. Other lists include USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Amazon.

To determine which books are classified as best sellers, sales from bookstores plus online sales are taken into consideration. The most often used source for determining best seller lists is Nielsen BookScan. According to their website:

Nielsen BookScan, which monitors the English-language book industry worldwide, gathers point-of-sale book data from about 12,000 locations across the U.S., representing about 75% of the nation’s book sales. Print-book data providers include all major booksellers and Web retailers, as well as food stores (excluding Walmart and Sam’s Club). E-book data providers include all major e-book retailers. BookScan enables its subscribers to access comprehensive reports from a wide variety of perspectives organized by title and author, by category, by region or by DMA. In a typical week, sales of over 400,000 different titles are collected, coded and analyzed, producing complete market information for retailers, publishers and the media.

Here are some interesting facts:

  • The term best seller is not associated with a specific volume of sales (for example, in the music industry a “gold” album means 500,000 sold).
  • Sometimes, an author or publisher will use the generic term “best seller” for publicity or marketing purposes on a book cover—without the best seller award being tied to a specific list.
  • Some books, over a long period of time, have sold many more books than the contemporary best seller.

The New York Times:

Started in 1942, The New York Times publishes the most well-known best seller list. Published every Sunday, with additional categories online, best seller categories include Hardcover Fiction, Hardcover Non Fiction, Paperback Trade Fiction, Mass Market, Paperback Non Fiction, and Children’s.

According to Fast Company, for The New York Times, the number of copies sold really has no relationship to becoming a best seller. The bestseller lists actually identify only how quickly a book sells rather than cumulative overall sales.

The Fast Company article further explains that how the list is exactly compiled is considered a trade secret. This is what is known: The New York Times prepares a list of expected bestsellers (based in part on past performance and on wholesale preorders and what the publishers tell them should be on the list) and sends that list to bookstores. The bookstores then rank the books and are provided space to indicate which books not on the list are big movers.

USA Today:

From DearAuthor: Each week, USA Today collects sales data from booksellers representing a variety of outlets: bookstore chains, independent bookstores, mass merchandisers and online retailers. Using that data, they determine the week’s 150 top-selling titles. The first 50 are published in the print version of USA TODAY each Thursday, while the top 150 are published online. The rankings reflect sales from the previous Monday through Sunday.

The Wall Street Journal:

The Wall Street Journal’s list reflects nationwide sales of hardcover books during the week ending the previous Saturday. From The Wall Street Journal: Nielsen BookScan gathers point-of-sale book data from more than 11,000 locations across the U.S., representing about 75% of the nation’s book sales. Data providers include all major booksellers and Internet retailers, and food stores (excluding Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club). The fiction and nonfiction lists include both adult and juvenile titles; the business and spotlight lists include only adult titles.

Amazon:

Amazon is now the biggest bookseller in America. Although sales rankings are available on the site and are even updated hourly, Amazon does not say how many unit sales it takes to make a book on Amazon a best seller.

According to Amazon’s website:

While the Amazon Best Sellers list is a good indicator of how well a product is selling overall, it doesn’t always indicate how well an item is selling among other similar items. Category and subcategory best seller lists were created to highlight an item’s rank in the categories or subcategories where it really stands out.

We choose a few of the most popular subcategories in which the item has a high ranking in relation to other items in that subcategory, and showcase the item’s rank on the product page. As with the main Amazon Best Sellers list, these category rankings are based on Amazon.com sales and are updated hourly.

Note: For the Kindle Store, Amazon Best Sellers lists are divided into Top 100 Paid and Top 100 Free. Both lists are updated hourly. For competitive reasons, Amazon.com generally does not publish the ranking formula.

So what does it mean to be a best-selling author?  I like how a DearAuthor blogger sums it up:  “All bestseller lists do is capture, imperfectly, what books are high in the national reading consciousness.  The next time you see ‘bestseller’ next to an author’s name, you might want to consider how flawed that status is and take a chance on a lesser-known author. Who knows what gem you might find?”

Kate Knapp is the Director of Publicity Services at Smith Publicity, Inc. Beginning in 1997, Smith Publicity is one of the world’s leading promotional firms, specializing in book publicity. Fueled by a passion for making good things happen for clients, the company has worked with over 900 individuals and companies–from authors and entrepreneurs to publicly-held companies and businesses representing a wide range of industries. The Smith Publicity reach is international with offices in New Jersey, New York City, Los Angeles, and London. For more information about Smith Publicity, Inc., please visit www.smithpublicity.com.

Related Posts :

Do You Really Know How to Write a Book That S...
How I Became A Kindle Bestselling Author
How Arielle Ford Made Her Book a Best Seller
Tips to Succeed on Reality TV

Filed Under: Book Business, Book Marketing Tagged With: best seller, bestseller

Sell More Books!

FREE! Sign up Cathy Stucker's Selling Books newsletter. You will get useful tips and techniques for writing, publishing and selling books, plus member-only exclusives such as free webinars.

BONUS! Get instant access to Cathy's audio program on how to Build an Effective Author Platform!

I respect your privacy & will NEVER sell, rent or share your email address. More than a policy, it's my Privacy Pledge.

Recent Articles

  • Save the Cat! Writes for TV
  • Summarize Your Book and Increase Your Book Sales
  • Why Structure Is a Friend, Not a Formula
  • Save the Cat Story Cards
  • Save the Cat! Cracking the Beat Sheet
  • Stop Procrastinating, Start Writing
  • FAQs About Children’s Book Illustrations
  • 5 Posts Every Author Should Write on their Website
  • Reducing Everyday Distractions So You Can Get More Writing Done
  • E.S.Danon – Moon in Bastet

Pages

Contact
Contribute Articles
Contributing Authors
Free Newsletter to Help You Sell More Books
Get Interviewed
Publishing Resources
Subscribe/RSS
Privacy/Disclosure Policies

Categories

Agents Amazon.com Article Marketing Author Interviews Author Platform Blogging Book Business Book Design Book Marketing Book Proposals Book Publicity Book Publishing Book Reviews Book Signings Bookstore Book Titles Book Tours Cathy's Blog Children's Books Content Marketing Copyright Copy Writing Ebooks Editing Fiction Writing Freelance Writing Get Published Ghostwriters Internet Marketing Marketing Fiction Motivation Networking Non-Fiction Writing Oprah Winfrey POD Publishing Public Speaking Research Resources for Writers Running Your Publishing Company Self Publishing Social Media Special Sales Video Marketing Writers Block Writing

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2006 - 2022 Cathy Stucker · All Rights Reserved

Log in to your account