What entitles a book to be called a bestseller? The answer is dumber and more arbitrary than you'd guess. A bestseller is a book that has appeared on one of the major bestseller lists: NYTimes, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and damned little else. A genre bestseller has appeared on a genre bestseller list -- say, Locus. A bestselling author is one who has had his name on the cover of a bestselling novel, even if it was a red-hot media tie-in, and his current work has no resemblance to it.
Sales velocity is very important. You can have an attested bestseller by selling a decent number of copies very very fast, but not be a bestseller if you sell far more copies over a long period.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-10-21 02:58 am (UTC)Sales velocity is very important. You can have an attested bestseller by selling a decent number of copies very very fast, but not be a bestseller if you sell far more copies over a long period.