Why isn’t every book advertised as a ”best seller”? And what’s the publisher’s criteria for choosing books that will be advertised as such?

Question

Why isn’t every book advertised as a ”best seller”? And what’s the publisher’s criteria for choosing books that will be advertised as such?

In: Culture

Answer 1

The New York Times is a news paper which publishes a list of the books that sold the most copies in the previous week.

Any book that appears on this list of best selling books is a NYT Best-seller.

If it appears on the first place in that list it is a #1 NYT best seller.

If an author has previously written a book that appeared on that list they can put “from the NYT best selling author” on the cover of his other books.

The New York Times actually has more than one list, splitting it up into categories like ‘fiction’, ‘non-fiction’, ‘children’s books’ etc.

So each week there are potentially dozens of best-sellers and hundreds per year.

Most books that get featured prominently in book stores and are advertised a lot fall into the category.

There are many other books that don’t, but you won’t here as much about them, because nobody wants to spend marketing money on books that won’t sell very well.