By O. Veliscu
A bestselling book is a book which, because of such influences as literary reviews and the endorsements of readers, especially celebrity readers, has made the book extremely popular and which is included in the bestseller lists of newspapers, magazines, and bookstores. The bestseller lists are based on sales figures from publishers and the book trade. One of the best-known bestseller lists is the New York Times bestseller list.
Bestselling books are not necessarily books with high academic value or high literary merit; rather, they are publications that have recorded a large number of sales over a period of time.
Specific factors that may affect a book’s position in a bestseller list include the book’s marketing budget, the skill and networks of the author’s literary agents and publishers, the market reach of distributors, attitudes of reviewers and retailers, and word-of-mouth among consumers.
So, how do you create a bestselling book?
In creating a bestselling book, consider the role of the five main players in book publishing and bookselling: the publisher; the distributor; the retailer; the consumer; and you, the author. (Sometimes, the publisher and the distributor are the same entity; at other times, the distributor is separate from the publisher).
Here are just a few things to consider when trying to write a best-selling book.
The publishing agency is perhaps the important factor in determining a bestseller. Think of the major publishers as major record labels or music companies: the publisher will read your book, or sections of it, and assess its market appeal and potential. The publisher will also assess the writer’s credentials and profile and then decide whether to finance the book. Financial backing is another major factor in determining a bestselling book.
Because of these two major factors, getting your book into the bestsellers list is hard. For example, in the USA, from 200,000 books published each year, only 1% will become bestsellers. The main reason is that the first factor (the publisher) often determines the second factor (financial backing).
The major publishers are the publishers that lead the publishing business; they are the ones that influence literary agents, booksellers, and the media. In the USA, there are five major publishers: Random House, HarperCollins, Time Warner Publishing, Penguin USA, and Simon & Schuster. Together, these publishers are responsible for 80% of the bestselling books.
Getting a well-known publisher is the really hard part of writing a bestselling book. The major publishers will probably ignore your manuscript unless you are someone like JK Rowling or, in Australia, Bryce Courtney or Thomas Keneally. Then again, occasionally, the quality and appeal of a first-time author’s work will scream out to a receptive publisher who is prepared to take a punt on a relatively unknown author. After all, even the most famous and successful authors had to get their start somewhere.
Whether a major publisher accepts your book also depends a lot on your access to, and ability to foster, good relationships with people. For this reason, you might consider using a literary agent to find a publisher for you. A good literary agent will have the necessary network of contacts and, hopefully, years of relationships with publishers to draw upon.
Of course, a literary agent will take a percentage of your book’s sales revenue; but you need to consider whether your royalties (typically around 10% of the retail price) will be greater if you use an agent’s referral to a publisher than if you approached publishers by yourself. In fact, some publishers refuse to look at manuscripts unless the referral comes from a literary agent. So it might be a case of ten percent of something (using a literary agent) is better than a hundred percent of nothing (going it alone).
If you cannot get a major publisher to take-on your work, then start with a smaller publisher. If your first book is a relative success, then you should have a better chance with a larger publisher the next time around.
Another important factor in writing a bestselling book is the marketing strategy adopted to promote your book. Marketing involves advertising, promotion, personal selling, and public relations. Much of the marketing is done by the publisher and distributor. But you, as author, can also play an important role.
The distributor’s main task is to get your book into the bookstores. These bookstores include major book chains, such as Borders, or, in Australia, bookstores such as Dymocks, Collins, and Angus and Robertson. Bookstores receive notice of thousands of new titles each month. So it is essential that your distributor does a good job persuading the bookstores or book chains to stock your book.
Sometimes, marketing your book involves the distributor’s sending agents to physically visit bookstores to promote the distributor’s list of new releases for the month. Distributors may also try to sell your book into online channels, such as Amazon.com. Creative distributors might also try airport bookstores, gift stores, and other retail channels, depending on the nature of your book and the market.
Whether the bookstore or book chain decides to stock your book depends on several factors. These include the reputation of the publisher and your credentials and profile as author, the appeal of your book’s subject matter, and, fundamentally, whether the bookstore thinks your book will sell well to the bookstore’s clientele.
Whereas distributors sell to bookstores, as author you can play a role in selling your book through bookstores. For example — and these examples are just a start — you can help to arrange and attend local book-signing events and cooperate with publishers and bookstores to launch your book at local bookstores. You can do media interviews and send free copies of your book to friends of influence. You can also play an important role in online marketing, such as establishing a website or blog for you and your book. But online book marketing is a large and specialist subject, which requires an article all of its own.
Because everyone wants to write a bestseller, there has been scientific research on developing a possible mathematical formula for achieving a bestseller. For example, in 2004, Didier Sornette, a geophysics professor with a research group from UCLA, created a mathematical model for predicting if a book is a potential bestseller by analyzing sales histories from Amazon.com. The information obtained by this model can then be used to optimize a book’s marketing strategy. But there is no sure-fire way of writing a bestselling book.
What influence does a bestselling book have on society? The influences are many, but one of the most interesting is that the language used by an author in a bestselling book may influence the English vocabulary and language at large. And once a book becomes a bestseller, you can expect similar titles and books in the same genre, and perhaps even similar titles, to proliferate until the “next big thing” comes around.
One of the most persistent genres in the bestseller lists are joke books and, more specifically, bloopers books. The blooper book genre reached its peak of popularity during the Great Depression with the publication of books like Howlers and Boners. There has recently been a resurgence of popularity in blooper books, most notably with the recent publication of the popular Funny English Errors and Insights.
So, the circumstances of the day — for example, the Depression in the 1930s, and, more recently, the global financial crisis — also influence what becomes a bestseller. In times of economic depression, people search for an escape from the daily grind and look for an economical means of light relief.