How many copies bestseller sell

That does not work. Only a systematic plan that is very well-executed will work. Like I keep telling you, they are elitist snobs. By the way—mainstream press almost never sells books. This is only about getting the editors at The New York Times to take you seriously, not about selling books. Simply put, these tradeoffs are not worth it for most authors. At Scribe, most of the authors we work with are not professional writers.

Their book will help them get them authority and credibility in their field, it can drive clients and leads to their business, it can get them speaking gigs; it essentially acts as an amazingly effective multi-purpose marketing tool to get them visibility. And before you ask the question, selling copies and making money from a book are not always the same thing. You want to understand the difference between bestsellers and impact?

Read this article about what writing a book has done for Melissa Gonzalez. It tripled incoming leads to her business, doubled her revenue in two years, established her as a keynote speaker, and got her media in every important retail outlet. It was resounding success in all ways for her…and it did it while selling less than 1, copies.

Selling copies matters if book sales are your only revenue stream—which is only true for professional authors. For people in business, a book has an entirely different purpose that often has no correlation with selling copies. All this being said, it does make a lot of sense for professional writers to focus on bestseller lists. Professional writers look at bestseller lists as a necessary evil in their industry, because they do confer status and help them gain credibility.

Then, they focus on selling books directly to fans to make more money , not hitting bestseller lists which often means less money. But for authors whose main revenue source is their business and use books as marketing tools, I can tell you: hitting a bestseller list creates very few tangible results for your book.

It can have some effect. Almost all of the impact of hitting a bestseller list is personal and social impact.

The people we see who are most obsessed with bestseller lists are the authors who view it as a status marker that they can reach that will make people see them differently, and thus feel differently about themselves. For these authors, striving for a bestseller list is about making them feel important. There is no real business reason. Obviously I am guilty of this desire.

My ego is fragile and needs recognition and validation, just like everyone else. But understand this: a bestselling book might make you feel good for awhile, but it will not get you any real respect or fill any holes in your soul. And even if you recognize that status as the reason you care about being a bestselling author, the best thing you can do is admit this to yourself. If you admit it, you can focus fully on that goal, make a realistic plan, and give yourself a realistic shot at actually hitting it.

Now—if you have decided to ignore my advice—I will describe the rules of every bestseller list and how to get your book on them. Burst onto the scene with three copies sold in the first few hours. Look at that hockey stick growth! Just a reminder to the kids that if you work hard, own an iPhone with a working camera, and have no shame, you too can be a number one best-selling author. What a thrill to see that number one best seller banner! Not just one list either.

Amazon is the largest book retailer in the world. They carry over 33 million titles and ship them pretty much anywhere in the world. At the same time, Amazon also allows authors to publish titles directly onto the platform, without the approval of traditional publishers, editors, or, as my foot book proves, really any barriers at all.

In , a new book was added to Amazon every five minutes. Gone are the days of having to be selected to put out a book. Gone are the days of having to go to a bookstore to see what is available. These days, over one million books are published each year, with at least half of these self-published.

I also wanted to show how simple it is to call yourself a best-selling author, in the hopes that people buying books become more discerning customers. But considering the Fifty Shades books have only just been published, they are already a powerful force.

Fifty Shades itself has sold 3,, copies, with the two follow-ups, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed selling over two million copies each. This is how the big series compare:.

The list is fascinating in its own right, even without the dominance of the big writers. Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian. Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on. Jump to content [s] Jump to comments [c] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8].

News Datablog. The top bestselling books of all time: how does Fifty Shades of Grey compare? Fifty Shades of Grey has become the fastest ever selling paperback in the UK - but how does it compare? This is how the big series compare: The list is fascinating in its own right, even without the dominance of the big writers. It was ranked at No. All of this brings us to the New York Times , and to a process that is notoriously cloaked in secrecy.

Its week goes from Sunday to Saturday. Like Publishers Weekly, the Times divides its list by format hardcover, paperback, e-book, and combined sales across all formats , by age adult, children, and young adult , and by genre fiction, nonfiction, business, science, sports, and advice. So if you want your book to be a best-seller, you should try to sell at least 5, copies in a week — from Monday to Sunday if you want to be a Publishers Weekly best-seller, and from Sunday to Saturday if you want to be a New York Times best-seller.

You should make sure your book falls into a very specific category if you want it to be an Amazon Best Seller, and that people are really engaging with it on Kindle if you want to appear on Amazon Charts.

You should make sure that independent booksellers feel really passionate about your book and are ready to hand-sell it if you want to be an Indiebound best-seller. Especially at the New York Times. The publishers of Handbook for Mortals made their way to the top of the New York Times list via the expedient measure of calling up various independent bookstores and asking if they reported to the New York Times.

Update: Lani Sarem, the author of Handbook for Mortals , insists that her sales were valid and that she intended to resell all of the books she purchased at events. But as industry publication Publishers Lunch points out , booksellers have traditional mechanisms in place that allow you to drive pre-orders to existing sellers. The only upside of placing your own pre-orders and then reselling the books is that it allows you to artificially boost your sales numbers.

The New York Times is aware of this vulnerability in its methodology, and it has systems in place to counteract it. According to data provided by the New York Times, of the books that have hit No. Bush, also frequently appear on the list. Everyone who works in the publishing industry agrees that it is physically impossible to account for every book sold in the US in a single week, yet regardless, we demand that major publications try to do just that, week in and week out — and then we use the results to decide which books to buy and make into movies and turn into big cultural events.

All best-seller lists are compromises and guesses and interpretations of fuzzy data, including the New York Times best-seller list.