[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Common expert opinion is that no one knows what that is. As a great lover of google, I could find lots of quotes supporting this, but here's the first I found:

how many books can you expect to sell?

The answer is… it is impossible to predict. The underlining nature of the publishing world is that best sellers are well… unpredictable. In fact, the only predictable thing about best sellers is that they are few and far between

Of course, the case of extremely well-known authors is an exception. The next US presidential memoir, or novel by Stephen King, will sell more than the next popular science book on the topic of linear algebra. But I can't see how you could reliably predict that the next novel by an author who tries to write in the same genre as Mr. King will sell more copies than the the next popular science book on the topic of linear algebra. We could argue the question back and forth as to which will sell better (that linear algebra book has no competition), but because there is no evidence, we just don't know.

If you go on Amazon it has a link on every Kindle title to take you to the top 100 best selling Kindle ebooks at that moment in time. Bandwagon jumping isn't about predicting what will be the next craze, it is about jumping on whatever is the current craze. Then jumping onto the next craze as soon as it appears.