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The Essential Elements of Being a Bestselling Author

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Scott Baylor
The Essential Elements of Being a Bestselling Author

Countless writers around the world dream of seeing the words bestselling author beside their name. It might surprise you to know that there are certain commonalities among bestsellers, as well as approaches for how to market a book. As much as paradigms have changed in the publishing industry during the past decade, the word bestseller has enduring value. When national bestseller appears in the promotion connected to a book, it can help entice people to download or buy copies. If you'd like to know more about what the phrase bestseller means, here are some of its elements. A book becomes known as a bestseller when it meets one of three unofficial criteria. First is its appearance on The New York Times bestseller list. The second way is an appearance on a similar list published by the Wall Street Journal. The third way is to show up on USA Today's list. There is no doubt that The New York Times is the most highly regarded and influential, but the other two count as well. Being on any one of the three can be a boost to book marketing as well as the author personally. Therefore, it's a common question to ask what it takes to make one these lists. Ahead are some insight and relevant information to make clear some of the specifics.

It's important to note that the relationship of book sales to being added to one of the lists is generally not definable. The sales levels books to achieve are related to each week and the figures for the other competing books. So, everything depends on the state of the marketplace at specific fixed points. Books appearing on any given bestseller list might have significantly different sales figures. For example, one week on record showed a top-selling book at 140,000 copies, which the fifth book on the very same bestselling list sold about 11,000 copies. To many people, the disparity in those numbers comes as a considerable surprise. Lists by genre are structured differently, as well. Taking The New York Times as an example, it's business list might have a #1 bestseller that will move under 10,000 copies in a week and still be considered a hit., Others on the list may have sales figures even lower than 5,000 copies. Looking strategically, it's also essential to note that the three bestseller lists only reflect the pace of sales during a particular week – they bear no relationship to the success of a book in the long-run. In industry-speak, some titles known as tortoise sellers might sell 800 copies for all 52 weeks of a year and therefore end up as successful.

Also, not every book sold ends up being counted for the lists. Each one has its unique way of counting, most often based on sales reporting from select booksellers. But those also miss significant segments of the bookselling world, including WalMart and Target – where some authors rack of their most significant sales volume. In the age of eBooks and digital downloads, some feel the status of a bestseller is diminished. It also brings some interesting conundrums. Consider a free eBook that has 100,000 downloads for a week. It could not qualify for The New York Times bestseller list. But there is no disputing its status as a widely read book for the week based on downloads. The NYT list does include eBook sales in many genres, which is relevant, given the steady rise in the market share for eBooks. The NYT list also is delayed by a period which makes it less suitable in the digital era, when popular books change minute-by-minute. A big seller from last week can drop significantly by this week.

Scott Baylor is the author of this article. For further detail about how to market a book please visit the website.

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