Marketing the Bestseller

Overview

The term "bestseller" has encompassed a wide range of book titles since it was first used in the late nineteenth century. The term has always been used to describe the popularity of books, and titles on bestseller lists have ranged significantly in quality. Bestsellers include the Bible, perennial classics, Nobel Prize-winning novels, and top sellers in genre fiction. For example, in 1939, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles, became the first detective novel to become a bestseller. Publishing companies understand that few books will make it on to bestseller lists, but they are able to survive chiefly because of those that do. For an author, having a bestseller is generally the realization of a dream. It is generally accompanied by financial gain and popular, if not critical, acclaim. There is a lack of agreement on what qualities contribute to a book becoming a bestseller; most people agree that bestselling books tend to communicate with readers in some compelling way, but effective marketing is also a key ingredient.

Publishers' marketing efforts are generally concentrated on those select authors whose works are predicted to provide the best return on their investment. Funds are spent on generating reviews, creating author profiles, and ensuring key placement in bookstores. Marketers also maintain contact with a network of individuals, including academicians, librarians, and booksellers, who help to promote books in a number of ways. A social media presence is considered necessary for both publishers and authors. Publishers may offer incentives, such as discounts for bulk purchase or sales on authors' backlists (i.e., past publications). Major publishers also generate demographic data on website visitors and e-mail newsletters and book announcements to targeted readers. The popularity of book companies that offer backlisted books for sale keeps authors in the public mind between publications and creates an audience for authors that are no longer publishing.

The first bestselling author to conduct a book tour was Jacqueline Susann, the author of the 1966 blockbuster Valley of the Dolls about the drug- and sex-filled lives of young Hollywood wannabes. Since the 1980s, bestselling authors have been required by publishers to promote books with tours, traveling to key cities where they sign books and read excerpts from their latest books. Bestselling authors may also appear on local television or radio, give interviews to local newspapers and podcasters, or appear at special events. Malcolm Jones, Vern E. Smith, and Ray Sawhill (2001) note that book tours are expensive for publishers, costing approximately $2,000 per day in 2001. In the late twentieth century, a best-selling author might cover twenty-five to thirty bookstores on a single tour. In the early 2000s, that number dropped to ten to fifteen, as the financial burden for book tours shifted onto mid-list and emerging authors, whose declining income from writing often forbid extensive touring. Factoring in author fees, overhead costs such as paying for an author's travel and lodging, and the discounted copies of books publishers provide to stores for hosting an event, bookstores and publishing companies often find themselves in the red even after a successful event. As a result, publishers began to look for more cost-effective marketing tools.

In 1891, the literary magazine, The Bookman, was the first to begin publishing a monthly report on the bestselling books of the previous month. At that time, American publishers were known for importing British novels without the permission of authors, and there was little incentive for American authors to seek bestselling status. However, passage of the International Copyright Act of 1891 led to new rules for the American publishing industry. In 1895, publishers in large American cities began releasing their own lists of books selling the most copies, and readers began using the lists as reading recommendations. Over the course of the twentieth century, the popularity of books from Britain and other countries declined in popularity in the United States.

Booksellers were considered the major partners of publishers in book promoting, and virtually every large American city had at least one major bookstore. The chief access to books for individuals living outside cities was through mail order and libraries. By the 1940s, the popularity and affordability of paperback books made access easier, and books were sold in drugstores, on newsstands, and even at lunch counters and cigar stands. The number of bookstores declined, and booksellers began concentrating on the sale of likely bestsellers with mass appeal rather than on riskier projects with greater artistic merit.

The Publishers Weekly Bestseller List first appeared in 1912, and it is the most respected by some critics. Generally considered the most prestigious of all bestseller lists, the New York Times began publishing its bestseller lists in 1942. Inclusion is based on having sold more than 10,000 to 100,000 copies at bookstores, wholesalers, and retail outlets. The Wall Street Journal only began publishing its bestseller list in 1994.

An estimated one million books are published by publishing houses in the United States each year, and this does not include self-published books. Only 200 to 220 ever reach the bestseller lists of the New York Times. In 2000, 70 percent of all fiction sales were generated by a small number of bestselling authors, including John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, and Stephen King. Two years later, the 205 books named to the New York Times bestseller lists accounted for 84 percent of all book sales. Delia Owens' novel Where the Crawdads Sing remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 124 weeks. The novel sold 907,000 copies in the first six months of 2019. During the same period in 2020, it sold just under 715,000 copies. Overall, the novel sold 7 million copies in two years and more than 12 million copies by 2022, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.

Applications

Archer and Jockers (2016) suggest that the most commonly accepted characteristics of the bestseller are a sense of plot, compelling characters, and grammatical competence, particularly the use of the semicolon. They suggest that bestselling authors also need an understanding of human nature and a talent for adding twists and turns to a tale without losing all plausibility. Archer and Matthew Jockers (2016) used a computer model designed to predict the success of books likely to become bestsellers. Dan Brown's Inferno received a 95.7 percent score, but Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer earned 99.2 percent. Both novels rose to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List.

Michael Korda (2001), a respected Simon and Schuster editor, examined bestsellers that appeared on Publishers Weekly lists, determining that bestselling authors are respected storytellers, celebrities writing memoirs, popular authors whose books appear regularly, or first-time authors that have managed to catch the public's eye with a new trend. Genres that regularly appear on bestseller lists include established fiction styles, diet books, self-help books, celebrity memoirs, science and religious books with sensationalized aspects, stories about pets, medical information books, humorous books, and books about the Civil War. Among publishers, the legend goes that the most popular of all books would be one about the Civil War, a doctor, and a dog.

In the 2020s, there were around forty bestseller lists that appeared weekly in the United States. Publications that generate bestseller lists include the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the Huffington Post. It is a given that many of the same books appear on all bestseller lists. A number of critics have questioned whether the reputation of these lists, particularly the eminence of the New York Times bestseller list, is valid. The data on which the lists are built are not comprehensive and cannot claim to represent publishers' sales figures and may not account for sales in some large marketplaces, such as Walmart or Christian bookstores. Unexpected trends, such as Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series, sometimes cause turbulence with bestseller lists, calling into question the purpose and criteria of a list. Publishers and booksellers began to advocate for the creation of children's bestseller lists in response to the phenomenon of Harry Potter, whose persistent presence was viewed as taking up space on lists designed to sell adult titles.

Research suggests that sales climb significantly the first week that a book appears on a bestseller list, but sales may taper off until a book drops off a list entirely. The average book remains on bestseller lists for around ten weeks. In the United States, bestsellers are most frequently found among books released by publishing giants such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon and Schuster. Such publishers may spend from 10 to 25 percent of net sales on promotions for bestsellers. Advance review copies, sent to potential reviewers two to three months before publication, are a major marketing tool that helps publishers target particular audiences. Fees paid to retail stores ensure that select titles will be prominently displayed for sale in areas with heavy traffic, including areas near cash registers.

Publishers judgments are not infallible, and some of the best loved books in history have been rejected by publishers. J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was rejected by twelve publishers before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone(1997) was accepted by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom. John Grisham, the author of more than forty legal thrillers, was turned down by sixteen publishers before A Time to Kill (1989) was published by Wynwood Press. Twelve of Grisham's books have risen to the top of bestseller lists. Even classics like George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) were initially turned down by publishers.

Issues

A 2012 scandal involving Mark and Grace Drisoll, a Seattle pastor and his wife, have challenged bestseller reputations. Marketing their self-help book, The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, the couple hired Result/Source, which purchased 11,000 books for $217,300 to make it look as if the book was flying off the shelf and assist the book onto the New York Times Bestseller List. Although the company's actions were not illegal, it caused a major uproar within Drisoll's church, and he was forced to resign. Other writers, especially in the era of e-publishing, have also attempted to manipulate bestseller lists legally, and websites and how-to books abound.

Marketing tools for self-publishers, or "indies," also include promotional discounts in online bookstores, author-generated newsletters to fans, a social media presence, direct mailings, giveaways, and cross-promotions by groups of authors. Within genre fiction, authors also publish anthologies that give both new and old writers exposure and increases the chance of a book reaching bestselling status. Once achieved, covers of future publications include the fact that the author is a bestselling author on a particular bestseller list.

While the popular conception of a bestsellers is hardback book, both paperbacks and e-books have led to new examinations of what makes a bestseller. The cheap, easily carried paperback was originally the brainchild of British publisher, Alan Lane, who in 1935 founded Penguin books. His idea was to sell a book for the price of a pack of cigarettes (two and one-half pence). His first offerings included mysteries by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Classics were published under the Pelican imprint. Pocket Books was established to sell paperbacks in the United States in 1938, selling for 25 cents, the same price charged by toll booths. Other paperback sellers included Avon, Popular Library, Dell, Bantam, New American Library, and Penguin. By 1947, 95,000,000 paperbacks had been sold in the United States.

The introduction of e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and various reading apps for mobile devices has led to rising sales in the e-book industry and to the practice of self-publishing, which allows writers to bypass traditional publishers and results in new methods of marketing bestselling books. In 2009, for instance, blogger Andy Weir who had been offering The Martian for free sold it on Amazon for 99 cents through Kindle Direct Publishing and saw it rise to the top of Amazon's list of science fiction bestsellers. The Martian also rose to Number One on bestselling paperback trade fiction lists and to Number 12 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. In 2010, Amazon announced that for the first time in its history, bestsellers in e-book form outsold print books two to one. Almost one in three books sold on the Amazon Kindle are self-published. Only 16 percent of Kindle sales are generated by the top print publishers. In 2022, the average price of hardcover adult fiction rose from $20.24 to $24.99, and fiction trade paperbacks sold at an average price from $13.95 to $17.95.

The twenty-first century has witnessed a marked decline in the sale of mass market paperbacks, which had long been considered a major source of revenue for bestselling authors, resulting in a decline in bestselling books and pressuring publishers to heighten marketing efforts for successful authors. In 2005, forty American authors sold more than one million books. Within a year, that number had dropped to twenty-six. Another 116 authors sold more than one-half million (Maryles, 2013). By 2012, Publishers Weekly was reporting that only twenty-six American authors were capable of selling more than 500,000 copies. Those authors included George R. R. Martin, whose A Game of Thrones sold more than a million copies, Nicolas Sparks (The Lucky One) and Nora Roberts (Chasing Fire). There were four books that sold more than 800,000 copies: George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, John Grisham's The Litigators, and a reissue of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The return of the Tolkien classic to the bestseller lists was in response to the release of the first film of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in December 2012. Another classic, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird,sold more than 600,000 copies that same year.

In 2023, Publishers Weekly reported that more than twenty-five books sold more than 500,000 copies, with eight books topping more than one million is sales. The top two titles, It Starts with Us (1.29 million in sales), and It Ends With Us (1.24 million) were both written by author Colleen Hoover.

Bibliography

Archer, J., & Jockers, M. L. (2016). The bestseller code: Anatomy of the blockbuster novel. New York, NY: St. Martins.

Dilworth, D. (2017). Always in season. Publishers Weekly, 264(16), 24–32. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=123061993&site=ehost-live

Galligan, A. (2004). Truth is stranger than magic: The marketing of Harry Potter. Australian Screen Education,(35), 36–41. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=13855860&site=ehost-live

Jones, M., Smith, V. E., & Sawhill, R. (2001). The hard sell. Newsweek, 138(9), 52–56.

Korda, M. (2001). Making the list: A cultural history of the American bestseller 1900–1999. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble Books.

Maryles, D. (2013). The highs and lows in paperbacks. Publishers Weekly, 260(1), 23–27.

Miller, L. J. (2008). Reluctant capitalists: Bookselling and the culture of consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Milliot, J. (2024, January 8). Women Ruled the 2023 Bestseller List. Publishers’Weekly. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/94047-women-ruled-the-2023-bestseller-list.html

Patrick, D. (2017). Swipe right for black books. Publishers Weekly, 264(48), 20–25.

Viser, I., & Kaai, L. (2015). The books that lived: J. K. Rowling and the magic of storytelling. Brno Studies in English, 41(1), 195–212. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=112746929&site=ehost-live

Wagner, T. (2020, May 25). Book marketing and business growth tips with the New York Times bestsellers. Authors Unite, authorsunite.com/new-york-times-bestsellers/