Nice and clear, as usual:
http://kriswrites.com/2016/03/02/bus...ther-thoughts/
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However, the opening sentence of that paragraph is spot-on:
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It used to be a real mark of distinction to hit the best-seller lists–because there were fewer lists and fewer authors (and before ebooks, pricing across books was pretty universal as well).
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Bestseller lists are advertising tools. That’s all they are. Yes, they’re a “mark of distinction,” in that, by some measure, a lot of people bought a particular book. As Underwood also notes in his piece, the name-brand lists can all be manipulated and are, much to the frustration of those of us whose unacceptable books outsold books higher on the same list.
The real thrust of Underwood’s article is pretty simple: the proliferation of “bestsellers” has made the term meaningless.
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Other indie writers have hit these Amazon and other company bestseller lists with hundreds of books sold or thousands of books sold. Many of my friends have hit the USA Today Bestseller list for a particular week because of their indie book sales. A few have hit The New York Times ebook list the same way, which I have to admit, is really impressive, given how hard the Times works to make sure no indie book, especially one that sells for less than $9.99, hits that list.
The problem, though, is what Underwood points to. Calling yourself a bestseller isn’t old-world special any more. Readers have no idea if a writer has hit the list with five sales or five thousand.
It’s taken some revision of thinking in my head to cope with this for me, personally. I missed the New York Times list several times in the 1990s with books that sold over 50,000 copies in a week. My first romance novel under Kristine Grayson, Utterly Charming, missed all the lists, including the USA Today list (which tracks actual sales as opposed to sales from “selected approved” channels) with first week sales of 30,000 copies—and I expected to miss the list then, because, in them thare days, 30,000 first-week sales of mass market paper was low. Not cancel-your-contract low, but romance low. For a brand new pen name, however, the sales were stellar, and we were all happy.
But those are the numbers I’m used to. Now, in the off-season (right now, for instance), I’ve seen big name writers hit the New York Times list with fewer than 10,000 sales in a week. I know indie writers who hit the USA Today list with 7,000 sales in a week.
It took a long time for me to wrap my head around the idea that mountains had become hills. Because of the proliferation of books that readers want to read, the bigger bestsellers sell fewer copies in their first week than they did twenty years ago.
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Much more at the source.
(Math, too.)
