The New York Times Bestseller List is Full of Lies

hello everyone Alexa down here and today I am going to be demystifying the New York Times best seller list I'm going to be dashing hopes and ruining dreams or really just putting an end to some unfortunate gas lighting I mean honestly hopefully giving you some peace of mind what I am sharing with you today is one of those secrets that is not a secret in publishing but a thing that is not as widely discussed as it probably should be and that is the known fact that the New York Times best seller list is not just a list of the best-selling books it's not just about sales there are so many other factors that go into something making the New York Times bestseller list and some of them are mysterious and some of them are deeply frustrating and most of it isn't particularly fair essentially the New York Times bestseller list is not really a meritocracy because seriously it's not just about who is selling the most number of books so I'm going to be sharing some conventional wisdoms about how the New York Times bestseller list works also some pure conjecture because part of the problem is is that some of it's very mysterious and so we talked amongst ourselves and publishing as to what how we think it works and mostly what I really want to debunk for a lot of you is the double-edged sword of wanting to list feelings when you don't list or feelings when you do and placing undue value on the idea of being a New York Times best seller because once you understand how kind of nebulous and borderline unfair it is I hope you have a healthier attitude about Hennig or not hitting the lists and this of course is coming from me Alexa Dunn an author who has not had the New York Times bestseller list and never expected to and probably never will I just want to say that I know I've never had the list and that I promise I'm not unduly bitter i legit have never expected to hit the list but mostly because i've actually understand how the list works and genuinely I think once you have a better sense I mean you'll be like vaguely frustrated especially when you have friends who almost make it and don't that is actually the worst I do have friends who almost but not quite made the list and then of course I have friends who have made the list I personally think it makes you feel better once you kind of understand how it works though you'll never really understand how it works let's let's just jump right in so the main thing to know that I've kind of covered is the New York Times best seller list is a curated list it is not purely based on sales it is curated based on a number of factors some known some less known or unknown that the staff at the New York Times the editors at the New York Times whoever manages the New York Times bestseller list they have this alchemy that they put together to make the magical elusive near at times bestseller list it is a known thing in the industry that the list is curated like this is not a shock to anyone who is in the publishing industry it does tend to come as a shock to everyone outside of it because I mean by the title the assumption is oh these are the these are the best-selling books no it's not that simple every book that makes the list is of course selling a lot of copies it's just not the only factor and especially there's nuance in the positioning on the list so to give you a real example that is heavily anonymized two books come out the third week of September not with the real week and both books sell about 5,000 copies book a debuts at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and book B is not on the list at all not even second third fourth or fifth and there are books on the list that sold only 2,000 copies are 3,000 copies look B is completely shut on the list even though book a and book B have more or less the same sales this is something that has happened continues to happen and will happen in the future because position on the list making the list at all is not just about raw number of copies sold so I want to talk about some of the important factors known and unknown so no one speculated that go into making the list starting with the things that we know are factors in listing sales of or sales though I've heard that it's not strictly sales I've heard it's actually technically copy shipped so the volume of books shipped to specific stores for sale I've heard then conflicting reports of whether it's no no it really is the literal number of copies sold that week versus no no it's about copy shipped so somewhere in the middle of that is your answer but that said we do know that number of copies shipped is important distribution numbers are important and when a book has a particular print run and is having a certain number of copies go to store specific stores which I'm going to talk about in a second we do know that that makes a difference you can tell when a book has a good shot at listing based on these things the next factor that we know is that some book stores or points of sale matter more than others there are key reporting stores to the New York Times so these are specific book stores some are definitely known widely others are less known at least to outsiders I don't know what they call are but the publishers definitely know and those key reporting stores to the New York Times the stock that they have the buzz that they report and the actual number of copies sold makes a big difference to the list I mentioned buzz so another thing that I have heard that happens is the New York Times well literally sometimes call key reporting stores in these stores and ask what's buzzy what's moving off the shelves what are people buying so the trusted opinions of key book sellers can make a difference to something listing so it is possible for strong support from book stores specifically in the book stores to make a difference in a book listing this is how we get a lot of really feel good success stories of a book not necessarily having a ton of buzz but developing buzz doing incredibly well and week one of sales with buzz from book stores or sometimes it's week two that it less it is possible for the little book that could to make the New York Times bestseller list based on groundswell of support but then there are a number of factors that are more speculative we don't know for sure that these happen or how big of a difference that they make but definitely there I mentioned buzz already there can be a prestige factor to titles that can make a difference in how likely they are to list there's all sorts of other speculation that I'm too scared to share in a video but the summary I want to give you is that there's all sorts of speculation behind the scenes that sometimes it's just down to how much the New York Times likes an author and that there's all sorts of stuff that goes on there the thing is none of us can prove it and no one wants to say any of that speculation out loud hi because honestly it sounds catty but at the same time I can tell you that behind the scenes in publishing we all talk about the list and why we think certain books listed especially if you hear that it wasn't the strongest seller but maybe it had the the prestige or the nd store support sometimes it's super obvious that something sold a million copies and other times it's just kind of like you're pretty sure sales aren't the number one contributing factor in something listing but you can't quite put together concretely why it did you're always happy for people listing unless they're your mortal enemy but we do talk behind the scenes about the composition of the list we've also been talking a lot lately about how there's been very little movement on the list but I'm gonna talk about that later another thing that is definitely known in the industry like it's known we talked about it is that certain publishers and imprints definitely gain the list more than others because you can game the list because of key reporting stores and copies shipped in conjunction with sales and pretty sure publishers that know exactly which stores are the key reporting stores and approximately how many copies need to be shipped to give something a really good go at the list also there's just specific kinds of marketing and publicity they can do in the run-up to a release of the title that gives it a better chance of listing because of word-of-mouth and getting people to hand sell it in the store there are certain imprints and publishers that really prioritize getting specific titles usually lead titles to lists and they have a complex set of factors and things that they can and do do to push books to success on the list and what ends up happening is that we know inside the industry that certain imprints and publishers go to get things on the list more than others it's a priority to certain imprints and publishers more than others and so your experience of how much your book is pushed to lists can just differ depending on who is publishing you so it just it's not always you and whether your book is worthy of listing and selling enough copies it's just different strategy depending on the publisher and the imprint and I say this so that no one out there blames themselves if they don't end up with the runaway bestseller New York Times best-selling book even though they tried their hardest their publisher supported them that they could have made it if sometimes luckily it is just out of your control but also sometimes a book is lightning in a bottle and it just develops that groundswell of buzz and it lists because it just it ascends and a ton of people buy it so they're it's really complicated all the factors that go into the list but these are things that are talked about behind the scenes in the industry which brings me to Laney saram so Laney serum aka handbook for mortals was a whole thing about two years ago a little over two years ago I think where someone who came out of nowhere debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list for the book literally no one had ever heard of and the whole thing exploded where we figured out that she had figured out how to game the list and she did game the list she basically ordered massive amounts of stock books from specific reporting bookstores like she bought them herself that's definitely one way to do it publishers don't do that by the way and she basically popped up a data point and they put her at number one on the list clearly without checking anything and within hours people were on Twitter like what is going on who is this person we've never heard of this book and they ended up correcting the problem but it kind of blew the list wide open and all of a sudden people who weren't in the know before were like wait this means the list can be gamed meanwhile people like me over here like yeah we knew this this is I thought I genuinely thought it was funny I thought it was really really funny that a no one with a book basically beat us at her own game she proved that it was possible and we know it's possible and it happens all the time and so I found that whole thing amusing I know I probably shouldn't but I did and actually that's what made it far more acceptable and comfortable for us to talk about publicly some a little bit publicly within measure about the mystery of the list what the list actually means and it was the first time we did I'll talk about it clearly doesn't genuinely only mean that real consumers buy books in large volume it's specific stores it's talk it's all sorts of things obviously she didn't have buzz and all of that kind of stuff up she wasn't actually curated for the list but she came to the system on the stock and sales order side because it is definitely possible and really I think it deigned confidence in the list and in some ways I think that's a good thing but to that end a new kind of issue that we've been facing and this is all in the way a world I don't play in the whorls of adult bestsellers or anything like that this is all young adult fiction we've definitely noticed a phenomenon over the last year or so where there's just very little movement in the titles on the yf-- sellers list it's the same five or six books they kind of move in position but very little comes in that's new almost no 2019 debuts for example have listed that's made a lot of us speculate on the back end like are there new factors going into the list that we don't know about that are impacting the list maybe they put in place to stop someone like Lanie serum from taking advantage it's possible and honestly to that end like this this is only getting peer lis into my opinion but also my reassurances to you watching about the value that you place in the New York Times bestseller list in a way it almost feels like it's lost its value because we know that it's not just about sales and it's the same books over and over again very little movement nothing new by the way this is a problem with the list Oh years and years ago and then they recalculated the way list to take off paperback and move series and that was the first time in a long time we'd seen new things on the list but the same thing has happened again where there's no movement so I anticipate they're gonna change the lists again but also it's definitely impacted at least internally and on in the industry a lot of the confidence in the list it's definitely interesting and I can say that there have been a lot of conversations behind the scenes of like why there hasn't been a lot of movement on the lists lately and whether we're looking at another shake-up for the list because when you know that it's not just about sales that there are other factors that go into listing such as buzz it's both kind of mystifying but also a little bit demoralizing so I want to talk about feelings in the New York Times it definitely used to be easier as a young adult writer as a writer in this space to make the list partly because there used to be separate lists for hardcover and ebook and when the e-book list still existed you could list if there was like a sale for your book and you sold a bunch of copies in a short period of time now it was done away with in part because people thought it was too easy to make the list by doing a big sale which fair but at the same time it means that now all we have is the hardcover list in the series list and the hardcover list has almost no movement to it it's the same books over and over again and it's you almost never see something new on the list and when you do its lucky if it gets more than one week and so the question becomes well maybe that's legitimately what's selling I'm so curious because there are certain books on there like 5 feet apart a tie-in book for a packaged it was packaged they created the movie into the book at the same time and I'm just like who's reading it are you guys reading it I haven't seen it on booktube at all some of those things we're not a single breathing human you know is reading a book but it's listing week after week and so you just kind of scratch your head some books on the list make complete sense you're like ah yes everyone's talking about that book I know it sold a ton of copies I'm so happy that that book listed and you feel that way about most of the books but some of the books it's just like her I mean that's how Laney is there I'm got caught we were all like whoo but I think there's less than this value in the list because it is so opaque it's not actually clear how things make the list and it varies so widely I've heard about books listing at nine hundred copies sold and I have heard about books listing at four to five thousand copies sold to like make those lower spots on the list it depends on the time of year and it's just kind of like and as I said there are cases where someone you know makes it with X number and someone you know with X number doesn't make it and you're just kind of like what does that even mean but what I want to leave you with is not to pin your hopes and dreams and aspirations on listing now I do want to admit the double-edged sword does listing matter yeah it does it book doesn't it doesn't listing can make a huge difference for a book listing even just once but it's usually listing for more than one week is what really makes a difference to a book it can create a momentum that legit turns it into a runaway bestseller listing just one week and being able to say something's in New York Times bestseller it can be a game-changer but just as often you'll hear people caution you that you can be a one time New York Times best seller and not be home like a mega famous best-selling author but it does or can certainly make a difference it is certainly a mark of prestige but at the same time because there are factors that are out of your control and it's not just raw about sales but also a book can be successful without selling that many copies it can just be really dangerous to be like I won't feel I am valid or worthy or successful unless I'm a New York Times best seller just in this climate where it's almost impossible to become one is especially if you're comparing yourself to older writers not that literally in age but writers who have been around longer because as I mentioned it used to be easier to list on the ebook list there are a ton of people who get to say that they're near Times bestselling author and it means they sold 3,000 ebooks at $2.99 four years ago so take it with a grain of salt but I just think so many people get so disappointed and devastated because they don't make the list I think the safest thing to do is never expect to make the list never make it a goal because it's something that's so far out of your control and then if you do a list it's just a great thing that happened that's the thing anyone who does lists should be incredibly proud of themselves it does mean that you've sold a lot of books by the way it just means that that's not necessarily the only factor in you making the list so someone who does make the list should be happy and proud but the flip of that is that if you don't don't hate yourself don't beat yourself up don't think that you're not as good as someone else and if you have made the list you're just an outsider who thinks that the list is and I'll be all don't think that the list hitter is better than the non list hitter I just think that those kinds of value judgments are really dangerous when it comes to the New York Times bestseller list because of some of the that goes on and what it means and what it also doesn't mean I hope I haven't blown too many minds as I mentioned most of this is pretty well understood in the industry we talk about it all the time behind the scenes it's definitely a complicated thing let me know down below in the comments what do you think have you long suspected this about the list are you just like totally shocked and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it I will make more discussion style videos about topics in and publishing if you're not subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that I post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 23,903

Rating: 4.9228487 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, new york times bestseller list, new york times list, how to make the new york times list, how to make the bestseller list

Id: qrTm1ZhymDg

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2020