A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: When You Want Your First Book to Make the NYT Bestseller List

 

(photo by Frank Perez)

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic is about that lure for every first-time author: the New York Times Bestseller List. Every author wants to know how to make it there. Plotting a place on the list is a complicated matter. To wit,

• Your book needs to sell 5,000-10,000 copies a week to make the list. Some considerations include 
• Not every book sale counts, so you would need to exceed that number. A calculation is made by surveying selected bookstores, with an emphasis on independent bookstores, and extrapolating overall sales for that. As such, Tucker Max considers every bestseller list a lie.
• Large sales through online sellers are less likely to count as much as needed.
• Depending upon the release date of your book (or the sales dates), you may or may not encounter extreme competition from big-name authors with books being released at the same time--and those sales will most likely exceed yours significantly
• Any books you purchase for use in seminars and workshops also do not count.
• The real kicker -- your book must be traditionally published, and the NYT prioritizes books published by the big five US publishers.
• Consider also that to stay on the list, you would need to continue selling 5,000-10,000 books a week; if your book makes the list only once, it looks like a fluke.
• Keep in mind also that publishers will not find these sales for you; it is up to you to come up with a plan and to have the contacts for this level of sales. That is the same situation whether you are working with the big 5 publishers or a boutique, small press.

 So, how do you sell that many books?

• You have an important job or nationally known name.
• You just happen to have one of the most sought-after topics in the world right now, have information that no one else and that is necessary to at least 10,000 people, and you have a maven to make all the connections needed to make sales.
• You have an astonishing platform with 50 million followers:
• Only about 1% of followers will actually purchase your book.
• Followers need to be active, not people who have signed up for your blog or newsletter and never get around to reading it.
• You deliberately build demand before your book comes out, using contact with large bodies of people, as did the authors of The Shack (yes, one author is listed, but that is a combination of both authors' names), reaching out to members of their congregation (both were pastors), and posting a chapter a week until the book came out. Still, it took a year for the book to make the bestseller list.
• Have a plan for getting at least 10,000 pre-publication orders for your book so that when it comes out, you have the sales in hand. Kicker - the orders must come through bookstores that are counted by NYT in its surveys.
• Get mainstream media to validate your book; some might consider these "elite snobs," but they may a book seem more credible to the NYT editors. Media centered around New York City seems to have the greatest credibility.

Want to read more on this topic? Check out this article.

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: If you want your book to be on the NYT bestseller list, you will need a reasonable plan to sell tens of thousands of copies.
Publishers are not going to be able to do this for you, no matter whether the publisher is large or small. Book sales must be actual sales, not distributed books, and must be to those stores that are on the NYT survey list. 

Read more posts about publishing HERE.

The Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors who come through our doors but don't make the cut--yet. If you have a topic you would like addressed, leave the question in the comment section. Chances are, in our 18 years of publishing first-time and experiences authors, we have had a conversation with one of our authors that we can share with you.