August 13, 2025
Do you dream about your book hitting the book bestseller lists? The idea of appearing on those exclusive lists is one most writers share. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to reach the top of your profession, but what’s the reality behind those lists?
It seems like every time you turn around, there’s a new “bestselling author” that everyone’s talking about. You may have wondered what the phrase really means, and what measurements the publisher is using to figure out a book’s bestseller status. It seems that half the books you pick up are advertised as “bestsellers,” but how can that be?
The answer lies in the fact that all book bestseller lists are not created equal. Each has its own rules, counting methods, and rules for eligibility. Some combine editors’ assessments with actual numbers. There are many ways to manipulate the numbers, and publishers know how to fudge them to make their authors look like rising stars.
You hear a book is a “number one bestseller,” and you automatically think it must have sold more than any other book that year. That may be right, but it may also depend on when the book had the most sales velocity. Did it enjoy a week or a two of strong interest? It may be a bestseller for that fleeting time, but that doesn’t mean it continues selling well.
Books that shine brightly for a short time, only to disappear into oblivion later, can keep their book bestseller lists status. Unfortunately for the authors, that doesn’t mean they made a lot of sales or a lot of money.
A book may sell extremely well the first week or month that it’s released but drop quickly after that. That first spike is enough to make it to book bestseller lists, at least for advertising purposes.
If you hear that a book is a bestseller, it may have topped the sales charts for just a few days before essentially disappearing. This typically happens with books that are rushed to print after a related news event. An author might sell a book that’s being made into a movie, and that causes a sudden, temporary surge in sales. Another example is a celebrity biography after the celebrity dies or commits a crime. After the initial public interest dies down, so does interest in the book.
Different book bestseller lists also have rules about where the books were sold and how they handle bulk orders. Some book bestseller lists count every single book sold in every store, to every library, and on every online platform. They include every sale from every buyer, whether the customer bought 1 or 100 copies. Others exclude bulk orders because they feel they’re not a good sign of public interest.
Bulk orders make it easy for publishers to boost a slow-selling book by sending bulk orders to bookstores to make it look like everyone wants to buy it. Authors or their family members might order bulk copies of the book to create the same impression.
You hear about millions of books going to book stores, and you think, wow, this title is selling like crazy. That number doesn’t tell you how many of these bulk copies sit unsold and eventually get shipped back to the publisher. It doesn’t tell you how many sit in a writer’s storage unit waiting for the world to take notice. For this reason, some book bestseller lists exclude all bulk orders.
Some book bestseller lists only include certain retailers and selling platforms. The list may only include independent bookstores and online platforms. Another list may add library checkout figures and readers’ responses. A book’s popularity may rise and fall according to geography, bookstore preferences, and ratings by reviewers. The “bestseller” system raises many questions about how many copies of a book must sell—and where—to hit the number that puts it on book bestseller lists.
To make things even more complicated, there’s also a divide between so-called curated lists and those that are strictly quantitative. A curated list includes the editors’ decisions about what books deserve to be highly ranked. Others are purely by the numbers, ranking authors only by the actual number of reported sales.
Now that you know how book bestseller lists work, you may wonder if their rankings are meaningless. They’re not, but they don’t tell the full story of a book’s popularity. More importantly, they don’t tell the full story about a book’s sales, and sales are what make money for the publisher and the writer.
Being on book bestseller lists has a lot of advantages, especially for first-time authors. Research has found that a first-time writer who hits a book bestseller list will see their sales and income go up by more than 50% in the first year of publishing. The impact is smaller for well-known writers whose sales tend to remain steady with each new book.
Getting on a so-called curated list can be particularly important if you want to prove yourself to be a serious writer. Those lists carry more prestige and ensure that serious readers will take note of your book.
Let’s look at some of the best-known book bestseller lists that publishers and authors watch the most.
This is the most prestigious book list. It’s a curated list that takes editorial and reviewer responses into account. It uses a survey sent to independent booksellers, major retail chains, and online sellers. The list’s underlying assumption is that these buyers and reviewers are mostly serious readers whose opinions of books should weigh heavily.
The list:
The national newspaper uses a list based on raw numbers. USA Today ranks books purely by weekly sales numbers, regardless of where the books were sold. This list is the simplest to understand and the one that most clearly provides a link between sales and profits. Do well on this list, and you’re probably making good money as an author.
This list:
This list stands apart from the others in focusing primarily on business and other nonfiction genres. It’s a prestigious placement for nonfiction book authors.
The list uses a unique sales counter and data provider called NPD. Originally known as the Nielsen BookScan, the data provider was bought by the NPD Group in 2017. It offers point-of-sale data on book sales by recording the number of times a cashier scans the ISBN from the barcode.
This list:
Publishers Weekly is the industry standard. Bookstore buyers and library acquisition experts give a lot of consideration to the publication’s reviews and its bestseller list. Like the Wall Street Journal, it uses the NPD counter to track bookstore and digital sales.
The Publishers Weekly list:
This is the closest you will find to real-time sales tracking of a title. Amazon’s lists are updated hourly. The site ranks books by recent sales on its platform. This list is open to self-published writers. Some noteworthy features of this list are:
Every singer wants a hit song, and every writer wants to be on a bestseller list. With the right book, the right marketing, and a helping of luck, you may hit one of those lists. At Publishing Xpress, we can help with high-level printing that’s worthy of any bestseller.
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