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What constitutes a National best Seller? quality? quanity?

Trang

97 posts

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1/24/2008

What constitutes a National best Seller? quality? quanity?
Posted: 25 May 08 9:40 AM

I was wondering, Im reading the rick shelley DMC/Officer series and on each book it says that he was a national best seller. The books are not to bad, but I ask this in relation to Starfist books. Side by side, Starfist is head and shoulder above the writing of Rick Shelley, no disrspect intended, just a comparison.

Yet his are listed as National Bestsellers, which leads me to believe to achieve this its more simply volume of sales versus quality of the writing.True? false? what factors come into play that havent allowed Starfist to be national best sellers?

1. Exposure?

2. Publisher?

3. Content?

Im just really curious about this, I tried to look up sales numbers for books, but most the info I got summarized that only the publishers have that info and they dont give it out to the public, so dead end there.

If you are better writer(s) (by reviews, opinion, example) than another would you decide to collaberate with another to get into that bestseller pipeline to get more exposure?

Take Heinleins Starship Troopers, not exactly a national best seller out the gates, but the author and the book had a hook, Controversy, which propelled it to greater heights. In turn became a conerstone of exposing folks to the Military Sci-Fi Genre, classic as they say. After reading more on ST, it was advanced along in popularity more by WOM than anything.

Im not trying to compare Starfist to any other really, just understand why it hasnt breached the same level, and what is possible to help that effort.

FairDay,

Trang

"Long Live the Fighters!" "Dragon, the other white meat"

eric_bean34

2313 posts

www.myspace.com/mcbaencreations

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Re: What constitutes a National best Seller? quality? quanity?
Posted: 25 May 08 11:55 AM

All excellent questions. Maybe David and Dan can shed some light on this subject for us.

DavidS

988 posts

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1/23/2006

Re: What constitutes a National best Seller? quality? quanity?
Posted: 25 May 08 4:38 PM

A "National Bestseller" is a book that has reached one of the major bestseller lists, eg the New York Times list. Starfist has been a genre bestseller, which can be pretty small sales compared to a national bestseller.

In hardback, unless a novel sells somewhere in excess of 50,000 copies in a relatively short period of time, it won't become a national bestseller. To date, no Starfist hb has gotten anywhere near that number of copies sold. A paperback has to sell several hundred copies, like maybe half a million, to achieve national bestseller status. We can only wish.

Bestselling authors get million dollar contracts. That's per book. I've had 26 books commercially published. I'm still working on my first half million dollars of lifetime earnings.

As to how a book becomes a bestseller, it's mostly because the author has already had a couple of books on one of the major lists. How does one get there in the first place? Nobody knows. Sometimes a big publicity/advertising campaign helps. And sometimes the publisher takes a big loss when the PR/advertising doesn't do squat for the book. Some books come out of nowhere, books that the publisher didn't think would do well, and top the lists for months.

Look at Tom Clancy. He peddled The Hunt for Red October to every fiction publishing house in the country before submitting it to the Naval Institute Press. The NIP had NEVER published a work of fiction. Red October launched one of the most lucrative literary careers ever.

Or J. K. Rowling. I don't read juveniles, or "young adult" novels, so I can't make the comparison myself, but people who do read them have told me there are several established authors of YAs who are better writers than Rowling but haven't had a fraction of her success. And the Harry Potter books are published by Scholastic, a relatively small publisher of juvenile and YA books. Yet after, what, three or four of those books she had made enough money to buy a Scottish castle and a titled husband. HP has made her the richest woman in the UK, and one of the richest in the entire world!

So how did Clancy and Rowling happen? Damfino. Word of mouth is probably the best advertising; people who like an author browbeating their friends and relatives until those friends and relatives go out and buy the books, get hooked, and pass the word on to more people.

Or maybe not.

Skink

1060 posts