Bestseller. What does it mean?

Turns out the word doesn't mean what it used to.

Jul 23, 2024

One of my friends commented about my recently released book, The Flower Queen, a few weeks after its release: "I don't understand why this book isn't a best seller."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"This plot is better. The cover is nicer too and it's better written, than many best sellers I've read."

"Thank you, but you're my best friend, and you've been drinking. Plus, you don't work for Oprah or the Times, so your opinion, doesn’t count. Now let me buy you another drink." But it did get me thinking about how the word "Bestseller," and "Bestselling Author" are thrown about. If you look at other author's webpages, social media pages and marketing materials, everyone seems to describe themselves as a bestselling author these days. How can there possibly be this many best selling authors out there? So what do these terms, Bestseller and Bestselling Author, even mean?

A best seller is a book that has sold many copies, and this is how the New York Times decides who makes it on the list, too. "The New York Times Bestseller list requires an author to make a minimum of 5000 book sales (higher, depending on the list) in a single week across diverse retailers and from multiple geographic locations." They have a proprietary way of analyzing sales data. No one seems to know the details of it. Seems like an appropriate way to decide for me.

The “Bestseller" label, like the word "Natural," is misleading because each avenue to best seller status seems unregulated. Bestseller lists have no standard formula. Other popular national Book Bestseller lists include Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal. To get on the Wall Street Journal's list, you must sell 3,000 books your first week out. If your publisher has the proper marketing and reach, that is doable. Each uses a different method to calculate its list. USA Today follows the sales at 3,000 bookstores and online sellers. It compiles a bestseller list of 50 titles (150 on its website) that includes all genres. Publishers Weekly has nine different bestseller lists. All the major newspapers also have bestseller lists, as do newspapers in most cities. If your book becomes one of them, you're a bestselling author. Now, I can't comment on how legitimate they are. I'm not standing over their shoulder, looking at the numbers. All I know is that I am not on any of them at the present time.

The big boys criticize Amazon Bestseller lists, but all these other lists can be gamed, too. Most of us have heard about publishers and other author’s buying their way on to best seller lists by buying their own books in bulk. Read about 8 Attempts to Hack The NY Times Best Seller List. What about all the authors they aren't catching?

Of all the ways to get to the bestseller status, the easiest way and one of the most suspicious is Amazon. No specific number of sales officially turns a book into a bestseller. It all depends on which of the three categories you choose to put your book into and what is going on that particular day and time. How do I know Amazon is the easiest way to earn Bestseller status? Because if I can reach this status, anyone can.

Before anyone jumps down my throat here… I'm not attacking those who have achieved bestseller status of their own volition through longevity in those big categories, romance, suspense, etc., and have stayed there more than half a second. Okay, half a day. My hat is off to you.

I’m here to discuss the ways there are to game the system. Why there are plenty of authors out there with best-selling after their name, and why it doesn't mean very much. Still, if you want it too, you can achieve it by carefully choosing your three categories when entering your book into Kindle and selling enough books in a less competitive category. You will get your lovely medallion even if you only hold it for four or five hours. Or perhaps you will want to reconsider the whole darn thing after reading this blog from Brent Underwood on how he wrote a book, designed the cover and picked a category in a couple of minutes and then got three of his friends to purchase the book and then reached best seller status. I both laughed hysterically and felt terrible. I felt bad because I had to mark my book down from $3.99 to $2.99 and spend hours researching categories my book would fit into, settling on Romance, historical, and 20th Century as ones I could compete in. I had to spend money on a promo and still only reached #11 on the Best Seller list for that category. It dropped to the top fifty the following day and was down to 121 by day three, even though I continued to sell between 15-17 books of that title every day for two weeks after the promo. I was at 191 in that category two weeks later. It is now back in the thousands a month later. That’s the way the pages fly in Amazon’s Universe. However, I am pleased with the increased sales that have came my way and the amount of traffic to my website. Appearing on the Best Selling Page for Historical Romance, 20th Century, gave me visibility I would not have gotten any other way, other than through Amazon ads, and that's a different set of skills and spending additional time.

We've discussed Publisher Rocket before, and I'm an affiliate for them. I believe in this tool. It's an essential resource if you are hell-bent on pursuing this bestselling status or are concerned with keywords. Do you want to have to sell 29, 129, or 2290 books to break into bestseller territory? Publisher Rocket gives you this information quickly, so you know which words might be appropriate. Keywords serve a purpose; to help buyers find us, but they also help us in the rankings. Picking the right keywords is critical.

So, getting a bestseller sticker on Amazon is, ultimately, about picking a narrow niche and manipulating the algorithm with keywords. Having an eye-catching cover, and above all, marketing your butt off to direct buyers of your book en masse so all those sales—the number suggested by Publisher Rocket—or hiring someone to do that through promos in a small window of time, that causes your book to climb to the top and stay there for at least one round of the algorithm is key.

Still, the easiest way to pursue bestseller status is through Amazon. Pick appropriate categories. Going the way of Brent is only recommended if you want your Amazon account terminated. His blog was dated back in 2017, but I can't imagine things would go well for you if you pick categories that do not fit your book. I’m sure that most of you heard recently that Amazon has been terminating author’s accounts right and left and I think some of it is due to this…books not categorized correctly or suspiciously. It is one thing to select a category that your book does qualify for and another to do what Brent did. DO NOT DO THAT. Unless it is going to be a romance story with a Free Mason character, perhaps you can get away with that : )

If you still wish to pursue this, your best bet is to write a solid book. It took me writing a bunch of books to even think of trying something like this. If you don't have a mailing list of buyers you can count on (getting them to all buy the book on a particular day). I did not. I’m still working on my open and click rate of my email.

Try these for buyers: Promo-Stacking is the surest way to get enough sales at a low cost on a single day or multiple days, but you have to be willing to discount your book significantly. If you don’t wish to discount significantly, going through a company like Kdbookpromotions or Booktribe (expensive) would be another way, to make Amazon’s best seller list, but think carefully. Is this something that you have to do? Only you know the answer to this. But let's say you were involved in an anthology with a group of people and wanted to try to hit the best seller's list with it. When I searched for it on Publisher Rocket, Kindle Books > Romance > Anthologies, I could get to #1 by selling 62 books or to #10 by selling 14. Realize these numbers fluctuate. By hiring a company to handle this, they can do what is necessary to ensure I get the sales, but it will cost me. If all the participants handle promoting it, we can still make it on the bestseller page. If this is an anthology and you have a group, you get all your members to purchase this book on that day and perhaps have them send it to their mailing lists, too. If everyone could buy it a specific day chosen, the book could no doubt reach number one or very close. Another category may be Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies >. There would be 148 sales to number #1 and 70 book sales to number #10. Still, again, you can't count on that. Those are projected figures. Every day is different. This could be a second category, though.

Bestselling author is the other term thrown about, and it's how some authors identify themselves. This "is someone who has sold a large number of books, enough to make a significant impact on the sales charts. It's important to note that the definition of "bestselling" can vary depending on who you ask." It could also refer to someone who has had multiple books become bestsellers’ or a book on the bestsellers list for over a few weeks. However, for many authors, "Bestselling Author" is all about bragging rights and even branding, not book sales. Now, with a certain degree of confidence, someone who was a bestselling author in a category on Amazon can call themselves an Amazon Bestselling Author and then take it a step further; they drop the "Amazon," altogether. Rather than calling themselves a bestselling author who sold the most books in the Amazon subcategory briefly, they are now a "Bestselling Author," which most people associate with one of the extensive lists. Now, suddenly, their street cred grows. Are they lying? Not exactly, but they aren't telling the complete truth either, which is a problem to me, but perhaps I'm just being petty. Putting a sticker on your book or saying your book was a bestseller in a specific category on Amazon is one thing, but calling yourself a bestselling author because you did… I'm not quite sure about that one, but that's my opinion. How about some of you commenting and leaving yours.

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