How To Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List
forbes.com
forbes.com
I'm a full-time non-fiction author, and I work with a large publisher. "Bestsellers," particularly NYT bestsellers, get huge amounts of display placement in retail distribution. If you make the list, you get additional in-store display and sell many more copies, so most publishers want you to do everything you can to make it happen.
If the author is (or wants to be) a speaker, hitting the list is even more appealing: it's a permanent high-value social signal that will increase demand for speaking engagements, as well as support a sizable fee increase.
Each weekly bestseller list has a fixed number of slots, and many authors are able and willing to buy their way onto the list. The lists don't want to be gamed, so they've developed countermeasures (like tracking national sales distribution), which really only creates demand for order laundering services like ResultSource. The number of authors willing to game the list makes it much harder to hit the list if you're not willing to use the same tactics.
Anti-gaming measures increase the demand for laundering services. If you run a big conference or company, want to give attendees/clients/employees a copy of the book, and you want to make sure your book orders count for the list, guess what: you need to hire a laundering service. If you don't, you probably won't hit the list. If you do, you probably will. (This isn't hypothetical: I've seen it happen many times, both for books that have hit the list, and those that haven't.)
The worst part about the whole game is that, if you intend to hit the list, it affects every decision you make about the book: topic, positioning, title, cover, and content. I think many non-fiction authors, in their efforts to make the list, end up making their books less useful.
That's why this topic hits home for me: I've made a conscious decision not to pursue the lists. Instead, I'm going to focus all of my attention on creating useful, valuable books that are interesting to read, then make sure the right readers know they exist. If one of my books hits the list eventually, that'll be nice, but it's not the point.
I know why I'm doing what I'm doing, but damn, the siren song of the NYT list is still strong. Every few weeks, I have to remind myself that bending over backwards to maximize sales over a one week period isn't the point.
It's working so far: my first book is more popular today than it was when it came out 2+ years ago. My second book comes out in June, and readers are already excited. I'm happy, satisfied with my career, and looking forward to continuing to write books.
Success as an author has absolutely nothing to do with bestseller lists.
Super to see you succeed in spite of being unwilling to play the game.
Quick question: Do you have any suggestions for websites/forums/communities for non-fiction authors? It seems that the process of writing a (somewhat) successful book is quite a tricky endeavor and as you mentioned topic, positioning, title, cover, and content play such decisive roles.
Also I am quite curious on your experiences so far, so let me ask a few more questions: How does your current revenue break down in percentage, e.g. speaking, book royalties, (+ online courses, ...), meaning are book royalties still playing a role or are they just a promotional vehicle for the other revenue streams? It seems that you are working with a traditional publishing house. Would love to know where you see the benefits in comparison with self-publishing?
Also, start to pay attention to how your favorite books are structured. The hard part of non-fiction writing isn't really the factual content, it's how the whole book is put together. Once you get the structure right, the rest of the book comes together pretty quickly. For both of my books, I spent probably 60% of my time working the outline.
The overall lack of marketing sophistication among authors is astonishing. Publishers aren't good at it either: they'll handle negotiating with retailers, and some pitch in with PR support, but most of the time the author is on their own. If you know even a little bit about online and/or direct marketing, you have a massive advantage. If you already have an audience through a blog or business, you're golden.
Here's the landing page for my first book: http://book.personalmba.com/. That page has a 30%+ conversion rate to a retail visit. Among the retailers I can track, 50% of the people who visit a retail page for the book end up buying it. Just being able to track this simple stuff is huge, and makes it possible to spend more money on marketing. Treating each book like a product that must be supported indefinitely helps a lot - way too many authors launch a book without planning long-term support.
Depending on what you want to write, you might seriously check into self-publishing. Working with a large publisher has some great benefits, mostly in terms of editorial, art, and production support, but you give up a huge chunk of royalty and control when you sign a publishing contract. You can hire contractors to do most of these things yourself. I really enjoy working with Penguin/Portfolio, but I still run the self-pub numbers every time I think about signing on to do a new book. Print-on-Demand Book Publishing by Morris Rosenthal is a bit dated, but it's still a good overview of the tradeoffs.
As far as revenue: when I started, I was advising early-stage entrepreneurs full-time, and my first advance was a nice bonus. Now, somewhere around 80% of monthly income is royalties and advance payments, and I'm no longer doing active advising. The rest comes from courses, both online and offline. Every time I agree to write a new book, that's a nice bump in income for the year. I'm in the midst of re-doing my online course, so when that launches, it'll probably be a larger percentage of income. My income isn't huge by CEO standards, but I'm well past my personal point of diminishing returns.
My best advice in terms of finances is to keep your overhead low: being an author takes a lot of time, but doesn't require much stuff. Once you have a decent computer setup, the major costs are research and travel. Free time becomes the scarce commodity.
Helpful?
Thanks for writing it with a view to making it useful rather than hitting a list.
I've been (mostly lurking) on HN for three and a half years now. I started my career in IT, and recently got back into programming with Ruby/Sinatra, so HN has been a great resource. Feels great to be coding again.
Then go listen to some Queensryche:
I used to trust the media
To tell me the truth, tell us the truth
But now I've seen the payoffs
Everywhere I look
Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?
It usually means they are more interested in selling a book and become famous rather than sharing information, leading to poorer quality work.
I have found that this has held true with reasonable accuracy.
They all start with the same input (money) and end up with the same result (more apps installed, higher chart position), just they go about it via different means. Where should the line be drawn?
Any competitor has less appeal.
The thing is - popularity is a stupid metrics to use for picking reading material (or almost anything else). There's a small number of people I respect enough to read anything they recommend, but I'm not going to read something just because lots of random people choose to read it.
Although I don't always agree with Bill on whether a book is worth reading or not, it's a reasonable indicator that I'll find it interesting and intellectually stimulating.
Now I'm going to check out this Tony Hsieh book and website. Seems interesting.
He is extremely good at self-promotion, and the critics he has over the internet (well founded or not), can still dissect/use some good bits he puts out.
The problem lies in intentional deceit. Tim is a smart guy and had access to very accomplished, smart people. Very unlikely that he can't think critically about some of the nonsense he puts out. For example he gets very basic physiological mechanisms astonishingly wrong and can't reach his own fitness or language goals with his own advice.
Danielle Laporte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions, sold more than many of the "bestsellers" at the time, but because the majority were sold online, she lost out on the ability to call it what it was. It's gross.
Besides niches being easier to manipulate, the economics are different. An advice author is often trying to use a book as a self-promotional tool (eg Tim Ferris and Tony Hsieh) so they can afford to spend more money, but a literary writer is actually trying to make money from selling books. That's not to say there's not value in paying to get to the top of fiction for better visibility or that it also doesn't happen.