In the past 15 months, we've had 10 books on the bestseller list. When I say "bestseller" I mean major lists: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, et al. Still, even after numerous books and a variety of lists, the "list" itself still confounded me, so I decided to do a little research to find out what it really takes to hit a list.
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First off, the term "hit a list" can mean hitting a bestseller list at any point of entry. This can even be the bottom 100. Many books that hit a list are never viewed by consumers, they land there, stay for a week, maybe longer or shorter, and then vanish. The numbers and metric for this can be tricky and in fact, not entirely accurate. If you've ever tried to hit a list and found yourself disgusted with the odds, I hope this article sheds some light on the ins and outs of how the process works. I do recommend, though, that you do some research on your own; there are some excellent blog posts out there that look at the finite pieces of these lists and how they are constructed.
First off, let's look at the facts. Bestseller lists vary by season, market, and genre. First, let's look at seasons.
Surprisingly enough, how many copies you need to sell of your book will often depend on when you release it. Pre-Christmas releases, for example, require bigger number than a release that happens in May. Why is this? Well, the holiday should speak for itself, and the same is true for key fall months like September. The hotter the month (not in temperature but in publishing releases), the harder it is to get onto a list.
The next piece of this is reporting. Another piece that might surprise you is that not all reporting is accurate. Never mind the fact that reporting can be slow; you could hit 20,000 sales of your book in October but not see this reporting until November for example, but they can also be inaccurate, and there's a whole market share that's never reported on. Technical, scholarly, law-related books can make up over two-thirds of the book market and are never reported on. Christian titles work the same way. You might say, "Well, what about The Shack?" This Christian title hit a list because it was sold en masse in retail outlets and not sequestered to Christian retailers that don't get the benefit of reporting to the lists.
Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Red Hot Internet Publicity. Penny is also an instructor at NYU. AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically works with social networking sites, blogs, Twitter, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book's topic, positioning the author in his or her market. In the past 15 months their creative marketing strategies have helped land 10 books on the New York Times Bestseller list. To learn more about Penny's books or her promotional services, you can visit her website at http://www.amarketingexpert.com.
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