The Shocking Truth About Best Selling Books
Best seller lists may seem impressive, but the reality is that many titles buy their way onto them, making these accolades less about sales and more about strategy.
We’ve all seen the labels: Amazon best seller. National best seller. New York Times best seller. Wall Street Journal best seller. But are best sellers really selling that many copies? Maybe not.
The shocking truth is that far more “best sellers” bought that status than actually achieved it through legitimate sales of books. You might be asking, how could that be possible? How could authors possibly claim that their nonfiction books, novels, memoirs, or cookbooks were best sellers if that is not the case? Here is the secret the publishing industry would rather you didn’t know: you can buy your way onto practically any best seller list, and you can cheat your way into Amazon best seller status.
Here’s How it Works
There are certain individuals who don’t advertise their skills widely, but they are known in the publishing industry as individuals who can push a book to the top of a best seller list, even the vaunted New York Times best seller lists. Today, these practitioners of the dark arts of best seller status charge over $300,000 for their efforts…and for that pile of money, they don’t even guarantee results. In other words, you could write a check for almost a third of a million dollars, have these individuals seek to work their magic, fall short and have nothing to show for it. Very often, though, they achieve their goals and their clients can legitimately boast New York Times best seller status.
The Wall Street Journal discontinued its best seller lists, and I’m guessing they did so because they got sick and tired of people gaming the system. I know of two publicists who would charge $65,000 to get a book on both the WSJ and USA Today lists, since both of those outlets base best seller status on the same book sales numbers. The folks I know who put books to the top of those lists actually guarantee their work, so you if you laid out the $65,000, you would see your book atop those two lists. They can still get you guaranteed USA Today best seller status for the same amount.
How do they do what they do? They are no more likely to reveal their secret formula for creating best seller status than Coca-Cola will open the vault and tell you exactly the recipe for their flagship soda. As I said, we’re talking dark arts, people. But what it comes down to is knowing which bookstores in the country report their book sales to The New York Times, USA Today, or until recently, the Wall Street Journal. They have a network of individuals around the country who go to those specific stores and buy certain amounts of those books at specified times. Or something like that. That is all they have ever told me.
One of these individuals who also prides himself on getting books to the top of the Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com best seller lists gave me a challenge. This goes back about 15 years. He asked me for the title of any book I had recently ghostwritten. I gave him a novel that I had written for a first-time author in the Southwest. My guy proved his mettle by making my client’s book number two on the overall Amazon best seller list, which has millions of books in its database.
“I would have made it number one,” he said sheepishly, “but I couldn’t dislodge Obama’s memoirs.”
Coming in second behind President Obama is a pretty good day at the office for one of these best seller mavens. I was impressed. And truth be told, I have hired him on many occasions to boost my clients’ books up the Amazon list. He has never failed me.
For You DIY’ers, Here’s an Approach to Becoming a Best-Seller
Amazon re-ranks its books, from 1 to 18 million or whatever it is, every hour of every day. Amazon also includes sublists, which identify how well, say, an Elon Musk biography is faring vis-à-vis other current celebrity business biographies. A book that cracks the top 100 on an Amazon sublist even for an hour can arguably be considered an Amazon best seller. And if you agree with that interpretation, then you can put the best seller sticker on the cover of your book and you can describe yourself, from now until the end of time, as an Amazon bestselling author or as a nationally bestselling author.
The way you do it is simple. You ask Amazon to drop the price of your book or eBook to, say, $1.99 for 24 hours. You then go to your list and ask them to help make your book a best seller by buying it during a particular hour on a particular day. I like Monday and Tuesday nights, when there are no big games or political debates going on, because most people are home.
Pick a time like 8:00 p.m. Eastern, which allows your friends and fans across the country to get home and buy your book during that designated hour. Send your list a note and explain that if they help make your book a best seller, it won’t just be a something for nothing proposition. You will donate X number of copies of your book to local libraries, or schools, or homeless shelters. You will send each of your readers a signed copy of the book. Or you could offer to send them multiple copies of the book, which will be great because then they can distribute it to individuals who might be prospects for whatever goods or services you offer. You see how this works.
It is better to create some mutuality when you are asking people to buy your book. Maybe they have no interest in the topic. Maybe they have no interest in you! But if they are going to take the time to plunk down $1.99 on Amazon, don’t have it be an entirely self-aggrandizing proposition. That is why I suggest giving away copies, or even inviting folks to an “exclusive” webinar, or what have you. It’s just a better look.
You might think that it takes tens of thousands of books sales to become a best seller, but you could probably manage the top 100 of an Amazon sublist with anywhere between 50 and 100 sales. Does this mean your book is a best seller? Technically, yes. Does this mean that your book sold tons of copies? No, but no one needs to know that.
By now, you might be questioning the mortality of this process (or you have already decided that it is so exciting that you can’t wait to try it for yourself!). Is it gaming the system? Definitely. Does it happen every day? Yes, with certainty. The higher up the food chain you go, the fewer people are shelling out the big bucks it takes to attain, say, New York Times best seller status. But would there still be a Wall Street Journal best seller list if there weren’t individuals who knew how to put books at the top of that list for a fee? You tell me.
And as for the DIY approach on Amazon, really, what’s the harm? It is fun to be able to say, with some degree of legitimacy, that you are a bestselling author. In my decades as a ghostwriter, I’ve had two legitimate New York Times best sellers and dozens of legit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal best sellers. Have some of my clients used the DIY approach and pumped their book up one of these lists? Or paid for those services?
I’ll never tell.
Bestselling authors rejoice…but buyer, beware!