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Loading...Almost everyone has the wrong idea about how a book becomes a bestseller. In the crowd I run around with, the term “bestseller” tends to have a technical meaning: a book on the New York Times Bestseller List. Every week the NY Times receives data from all the major book-selling outlets – from Amazon to Indies – and crunches the numbers for their various lists (Fiction Hardbacks, Non-Fiction Hardbacks, paperback fiction, etc.). There are 25 books in each category that make the list, but they *print* only the top 15.
To put that list in a bit of perspective, there are about 700 – 800 new books published in the U.S. every day (not counting self-published books). To make the top 25 in a given week is … well, not easy.
As many of you know, a non-fiction “trade book” is one written for a broad, general audience rather than for scholars in a field of study (an “academic” book or a “monograph”) or for classroom use for students (a textbook). Normally, the point of writing a trade book is to get a lot of people to read it since, after all, it’s written for a wide audience. So how do books get widely read?
I wrote my first trade book in 1998 (uh, 25 years ago) (ouch), and it was published then in 1999: Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. (I meant the title to be clever: we were moving into a new millennium and Jesus was a millenary prophet predicting the end of the current age.) At the time I had basically no clue how trade books would sell well.
My assumption was simply that if a book was a good book, it would sell and the best ones would become best sellers. Yeah, that’s simply wrong. You will almost certainly have noticed that some of the best books you’ve ever read are ones that your family and friends have never even heard of; or you may well have had the experience of reading a runaway best seller that you thought was schlock compared with another book that was never mentioned by anyone. Books that are widely read, of course, are attractive to large numbers of people, and the bestsellers are attractive to the largest numbers. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best books.
What most authors think – at least the many dozens I’ve talked with – is that a book “does well” when
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You’ve pointed out that the top-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s was Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth which sold millions of copies while being ignored by mainstream media because back then Evangelical Fundamentalism was still an authentic subculture. Do you think that’s still possible in the current media climate? Could there be books out there now selling millions of copies while being completely ignored by mass media because they’re looking in the wrong place?
I guess by definition I wouldn’t know. 🙂 But the Left Behind series certainly wasn’t ignored!
Hi Bart,
I hope you are keeping well. I remember that you recently responded to a post along the lines of…….”I don’t normally make a habit of reading ‘trade books’ and then you referred to a number of authors that either you enjoyed or recommended others to read.
Would you be kind enough to let me know which blog contained this text. I’ve spent a long time searching for this but to no avail.
Thanks Bart
Kind regards
Alan
I’m afraid I don’t know. Did you try a word search using just something that is unusual, like “recommended” or “enjoyed”?
It’s a bit of a long shot, but maybe this :
https://ehrmanblog.org/armageddon-my-new-book-on-the-revelation-of-john/
Bart has a couple of exchanges with “Frank Bella” in the comments.
Bart,
I’ve been thinking alot about *context* when applied to NT materials lately. An analogy I came up with is like roots of trees and plants that grow deep underground and mingle and sometimes intertwine so is much NT material. The roots of NT material can sometimes be interacting with many different influences.
So, ones knowledge of the ANE, Hebrew Bible, Greco-Roman literature, Palestine in the 1rst C etc can influence how one views context.
In addition to that ones theological beliefs are going to influence how one yields the hermeneutical hammer.
People often say “you’re taking it out of context!” in debates – and while there may be times when simply reading a few verses before or after can give you a proper context – it seems to me that just as often there may be many other factors to consider when considering *context* for NT material.
What are your overall thoughts on this topic?
TY and have a wonderful day,
SC
I think most people don’t consider context at all, and those who do don’t consider it enough. But complext is complicated — involving time, place, political/social/cultural situation; ideologies; religious views; literary genre; immediate literary context. No wonder most people don’t go there….
This article cuts off after the word, “when” in the 6th paragraph. Is this a technical error or am I missing something?
You need to click on Support and ask for help: usually this means that you need to resubscribe or simply leave and start up again your server.
Do some authors/publishers/? game the system by buying large amounts of a book they want to push?
I’ve heard accusations of certain evangelical preachers purchasing large volumes of a new book, giving them away to fellow Christian’s and encouraging them to write positive reviews on Amazon. If this is really done, it’s gaming the system unless the NYT lists have a way to work around it?
I’d be amazed if any major publishers do, but I don’t know about smaller ones wanting to make a splash. It would be hugely expensive and almost certainly not weroth the cost (given the numbers of books required). I’ve heard of billionares doing it though, including political figures.
I was surprised – and bummed – when I read a few explanations on how the NYT best-seller list really works. People often simply buy their way onto it!! There are people who will ‘guarantee’ you a place on them for sufficient $$$! Ugh!
See:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/how-bestseller-lists-actually-work-and-how-to-get-on-them/280520
Yeah, I’m not sure that happens much. Some extreme millionaires might. But I’ve never heard any publisher editor or agent complain about it.
I just listened to both the interviews linked to from this post. The connection with the French Revolution, mentioned in both interviews, was interesting, and raises further questions. The sermon excerpt played in the Terry Gross interview was extraordinary (I can’t be bothered looking up how to spell the name of the preacher). In the Sam Harris interview, I also found the overview of the history of postmillennialism to also be interesting, especially because it is a view that now seems so alien.