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

 

(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 continues the discussion from last week about that lure for every first-time author: the New York Times Bestseller List. Last week, we talked about the need to sell 5000-10000 books each and every week you want your book to appear on the list, with the understanding that this is not a count of total books sold but an algorithmic approach, using sampling from stores that NYT considers representative of the whole (right or wrong) and might require the number of books sold as a whole to be greater in order to have enough hit the right sampling venues.

The traditional and honest way to get your book on the bestseller list is to hit those sales volumes, but some authors on the list have taken another route:

• They purchase 5000-10000 copies of their own book through one or more bookstore orders (or in other ways that count in the sampling),
• This requires pretty deep pockets, but there are people who do it. 
• A one-time appearance on the list can be an indication of the author buying his/her way in, but that is not always the case.
• They have someone else purchase 5000-10000 copies of their book.
• Examples include the Republication National Committee bulk-buying copies of leading Republicans' books; the intent might be to put the book on the bestseller list or their might be a different political purpose.
• Any organization making very significant bulk purchases could be doing to to boost the book's possibility of ending upon the bestseller list.

 So, how is buying your way onto the NYT bestseller list looks upon?

• This is not illegal.
• The NYT frowns upon it, but does not always know how sales came about and does nothing about individual authors buying their way onto the list.
• With bulk purchases of significant size from organizations, the NYT might mark the position on the NYT bestseller list as suspicious--but the book will still be on the list.
• This is considered undemocratic and unfair by other authors who may not have deep pockets.

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 and do not have a reasonable plan to sell tens on thousands of copies, then you or some organization that you can find to support you will need about $200K to buy the equivalent, though we would never recommend doing so; it is not, in our opinion, ethical.
Buying your way onto the list, in our opinion, is not only unethical, it reveals an ego that might not be able to acquire the humility needed for long-term book promotion. A short-term gain in sales may be all that is realized while a long-term loss financially is pretty much guaranteed. 

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.