Bestseller
A bestseller is a
In everyday use, the term bestseller is not usually associated with a specified level of
Particularly in the case of
Steinberg defined a bestseller as a book for which demand, within a short time of that book's initial publication, vastly exceeds what is then considered to be big sales.[3][4][5]
Early best sellers
The term "best seller" is first known to have been recorded in print in 1889 in the
The earliest highly popular books were nearly all religious, but the
By the time of
Description and types of bestseller
Bestsellers are usually separated into fiction and non-fiction categories. Different list compilers have created a number of other subcategories. The New York Times was reported to have started its "Children's Books" section in 2001 just to move the Harry Potter books out of the No. 1, 2, and 3 positions on their fiction chart, which the then three-book series had monopolized for over a year.[10]
Bestsellers also may be ranked separately for hardcover and paperback editions. Typically, a hardcover edition appears first, followed in months or years by the much less expensive paperback version. Hardcover bestseller status may hasten the paperback release of the same, or slow the release, if hardcover sales are brisk enough. Some lists even have a third category, trade paperback bestsellers.
In the United Kingdom, a hardcover book could be considered a "bestseller" with sales ranging from 4,000 to 25,000 copies per week, and in Canada, bestsellers are determined according to weekly rankings in the country's national print sales tracking service, BNC SalesData.[11] There are many "bestseller lists" that display anywhere from 10 to 150 titles.
Differences among lists
Bestseller lists may vary widely, depending on the method used for calculating sales. The
Lists from
The weight and price of a book may affect its positioning on lists. The Amazon.com list tends to favor
Category structure affects the positioning of a book in other ways. A book that might be buried on the Indie hardcover fiction list could be positioned very well on The New York Times hardcover advice list or the Publishers Weekly religion hardcover list.
Verifiability
Bestseller reports from companies such as Amazon.com, which appear to be based strictly on auditable sales to the public, may be at odds with bestseller lists compiled from more casual data, such as The New York Times lists'
This situation suggests a similar one in the area of
Today, many lists come from automated sources. Booksellers may use their POS (point-of-sale) systems to report automatically to Book Sense. Wholesalers such as the giant Ingram Content Group have bestseller calculations similar to Amazon's, but they are available only to subscribing retailers. Barnes & Noble and other large retail chains collect sales data from retail outlets and their Web sites to build their own bestseller lists.
The making of a bestseller
There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page. If you look back on the best sellers you have read, you will find that they all have this quality. You simply have to turn over the page.
— Ian Fleming, 1963[13]
Ultimately, having a great number of buyers creates a bestseller; however, there is a distinct "making of" process that determines which books have the potential to achieve that status. Not all publishers rely on, nor strive for, bestsellers, as the survival of small presses indicates. Large publishing houses, on the other hand, are like major record labels and film studios, and require consistent high returns to maintain their large overhead. Thus, the stakes are high. It is estimated that 200,000 new books are published each year in the U.S., and less than 1% achieve bestseller status.[14] Along the way, major players act as gatekeepers and enablers, including literary agents, editors, publishing houses, booksellers, and the media (particularly, publishers of book reviews and bestseller lists). While literature awards have a beneficial effect at least on sales of hard covers,[15] their impact is not detectable beyond a benchmark of ca. 800,000 sold copies.[16] The high visibility of an established and best-selling author is paramount in the equation also. In addition to writing the book, an author has to acquire representation and negotiate this publishing chain.[17]
At least one scientific approach to creating bestsellers has been devised. In 2004,
From what is described above, intrinsic properties of books (like style or content) are often ignored or even deemed as irrelevant for their success by consumer psychologists, literary scholars, economists and sociologists alike. The success of novels is instead said to be made by extrinsic factors like literary critics, publishers, media, conformity and other social influences.[20] However, an elaborated model examining over a dozen external variables potentially influencing books sales could only explain less than 40% of differences in sales.[15] Research found intrinsic properties of novels which do influence their success. For example, a smaller disparity between the frequency of emotional words and rational words was predictive for successful novels.[21]
Unread bestsellers
Bestsellers have gained such great popularity that it has sometimes become fashionable to purchase them. Critics have pointed out that just because a book is purchased doesn't mean it will be read. The rising length of bestsellers may mean that more of them are simply becoming bookshelf decor. In 1985 members of the staff of The New Republic placed coupons redeemable for $5 cash inside 70 books that were selling well, and none of them were sent in.[22]
Major publishers
In April 2013
Other major publishers include
Cultural role
While the basic dictionary definition of bestseller is self-evident, "a popular, top-selling book", the practical cultural definition is somewhat more complex. As consumer bestseller lists generally do not detail specific criteria, such as numbers sold, sales period, sales region, and so forth, a book becomes a bestseller mainly because an "authoritative" source says it is. Calling a book a "top-selling" title is not so impressive as calling it "The New York Times bestseller". Although the former phrase is assumed to be derived from sales figures, the latter benefits from the high profile of the particular list. A book that is identified as a "bestseller" greatly improves its chance of selling to a much wider audience. In this way, bestseller has taken on its own popular meaning, rather independent of empirical data, by becoming a compromised product category and, in effect, attempting to create a marketing image. For example, a "summer bestseller" is usually determined long before the summer is over, and signals a book's suitability for millions of lounging pool-side readers.
The use of the marketing phrase, underground bestseller further illustrates the independent-from-sales, self-defining aspect of the term. For example, publisher HarperCollins suggested the bestseller potential of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel by announcing "...four years after her award-winning, underground bestseller, Little Altars Everywhere..." in the promotion. The book went on to achieve bestseller status in the 1990s. In reviews of the 2002 film of the same name, the novel's bestseller status was cited routinely, as in "compelling adaptation of Rebecca Wells' bestseller".[25]
The famous Diogenes Publisher at Zürich (Swiss) started to talk about its own Worstsellers in 2006, and therewith brought a new mode-word into the German speaking European countries.
Connection with the movie industry
Bestsellers play a significant role in the mainstream movie industry. There is a long-standing Hollywood practice of turning bestsellers into feature films. Many, if not the majority, of modern movie "classics" began as bestsellers. On the Publishers Weekly fiction bestsellers of the year charts, we find: #1: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003); #3. Jaws (1974); #2. The Exorcist (1971); #1. Love Story (1970); #2. The Godfather (1969); among many others. Several of each year's fiction bestsellers ultimately are made into high-profile movies. Being a bestseller novel in the U.S. during the last forty years has guaranteed consideration for a big budget, wide-release movie.[26][27][original research?]
See also
- List of best-selling books
- List of best-selling video games
- List of best-selling music artists
- List of best-selling singles
- List of best-selling albums
- List of highest-grossing films
- List of best-selling manga
- List of highest-grossing animated films
References
- ISBN 978-1-108-72563-7. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
- ISBN 9780226144726.
- ^ Steinberg, S. H. Five Hundred Years of Printing. 1955.
- ^ P. N. Furbank. "The Twentieth-Century Bestseller". In Boris Ford (ed.). The Pelican Guide to English Literature. Volume 7: "The Modern Age". Penguin Books. 1961. Page 429.
- .
- ^ "best, a. and adv." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online December 12, 2007.
- ^ For details of editions, see individual articles (in most cases)
- ^ Hoffmeister, Gerhart. "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther)". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 June 2004. The Literary Dictionary Company. Retrieved 17 March 2006
- ^ "Deutsche Sammlung" (in German). Goethe-Museum Düsseldorf. Archived from the original on 2010-10-24. Retrieved 2012-09-10.
- ^ Bolonik, Kera. "A list of their own". Salon.com:August 16, 2000. Retrieved December 7, 2005.
- ^ "Bestsellers: Hardcover Fiction, September 3, 2016". The Globe & Mail. 13 October 2023.
- ^ Zhi Gang Sha#Works
- ^ Temple, Emily (2019-05-28). "Ian Fleming Explains How to Write a Thriller". Lithub. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
- ^ Maryles, Daisy. Bestsellers by the Numbers". Publishers Weekly; 9-Jan-2006. Retrieved 22-Apr-2006.
- ^ S2CID 154217833.
- ISSN 2354-0036.
- ISBN 0-7931-9308-7.
- PhysOrg.com: December 5, 2004. Retrieved December 7, 2005.. UCLA News: December 1, 2004. Retrieved December 7, 2005.
"UCLA Physicist Applies Physics to Best-Selling Books" Archived 2007-07-01 at the Wayback Machine - ^ "DID DIRTY TRICKS CREATE A BEST-SELLER?". Stern, Willy. August 1995. Archived from the original on 2008-02-12. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
- ISSN 2162-6057.
- S2CID 145398857.
- ^ Goldstein, Bill (15 July 2002). "THINK TANK; Let Us Now Praise Books Well Sold, Well Loved but Seldom Read". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
- ^ "Meet Penguin Random House, the World's Largest Book Publisher That Will Counter Amazon". 5 April 2013.
- ^ "The Global 50: The World's Largest Book Publishers, 2012".
- ^ About Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood Archived 2006-05-27 at the Wayback Machine, HarperCollins. The review quote is from Movies Unlimited Archived 2007-12-27 at the Wayback Machine. Numerous such mentions may be located by a Web search for "film version Rebecca Wells bestseller" or similar. All retrieved 17 March 2006.
- ^ Chaudhuri , Saabira (12 November 2006). "From Best Seller To Blockbuster". Forbes. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
- ^ Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lists 1990-1995 Archived 2007-12-14 at the Wayback Machine. Correlation with movies may be achieved by searching at Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Both retrieved 17 March 2006.
Further reading
- Bloom, Clive (2002). Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900
- Boss, Shira (2007). "The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller", The New York Times, May 13, 2007.
- Feather, John and Woodbridge, Hazel (2007). "Bestsellers in the British Book Industry 1998–2005" Publishing Research Quarterly Vol. 23, No.3, pp. 210–223. doi:10.1007/s12109-007-9013-3
- Miller, Laura J. (2000). "The Best-Seller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction" Book History Vol. 3, pp. 286–304.
- Sorensen, Alan T. (2004). Bestseller Lists and Product Variety: The Case of Book Sales.
- Sutherland, John (2007). Bestsellers: a very short introduction, Very short introduction.
- Sutherland, John (2002). Reading the decades: fifty years of the nation's bestselling books.
- Sutherland, John (1981). Bestsellers: popular fiction of the 1970s.
- Vanderbilt, Arthur T. (1999). The making of a bestseller: from author to reader.
External links
- The Bestsellers Database, 20th-century American bestsellers compiled by students at the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois, Catholic University (DC), and Brandeis University
- The New York Times Best Seller list (current)
- Historic New York Times Lists
- Publishers Weekly Bestseller List (current)
- Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lists from 1900 to 1998