Creating Bestsellers: Questions & Answers

Book Marketing 101: How to Create a Bestseller

by John Kremer

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Table of Contents

Introduction by John Kremer ...... 4

Outsell the New York Times Bestsellers —
Without Breaking a Sweat! by John Kremer ...... 10

Creating Bestsellers Q&A by John Kremer ...... 13

Some Great Book Marketing Ideas from BMU readers ...... 42

More Sales Opportunities by John Kremer ...... 48

50 Ways to Create a Bestseller by Greg Godek ...... 51

New Ideas for Selling More Books by John Kremer ...... 54

Introductionby John Kremer

The following introduction is expanded from several sections of the 5th Edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books by John Kremer. This report only touches on a few of the basics of creating a bestseller. See the Questions and Answers section following this introduction for more detailed information. For more ideas on how to market your books, read the sixth edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books.

The Value of Bestsellers

When planning your future books, always be on the lookout for any title that has the possibility of becoming a bestseller (for example, because it covers a hot topic, it has an author who is willing to do a lot of promotion, it has an author who is a good speaker and/or TV guest, it has drawn lots of rights interest, it has created a buzz among booksellers or prereviewers, it has a great title, or simply because you believe it is the best book to come along in a long time). Then do everything you can to make it a bestseller. Why? Because a bestseller can put your company on the map. Here a just a few examples of what can happen when one of your books becomes a bestseller:

The Naval Institute Press hit the big time when they published The Hunt for Red October. Not only did wholesalers, booksellers, and librarians look more carefully at the Institute's new titles, but they also began buying more of their backlist titles as well. In addition, book reviewers began giving more serious consideration to new titles published by the Press.

North Point Press reported similar results after Evan Connell's Son of The Morning Star hit the bestseller lists.

It's not even necessary for a title to hit the bestseller lists to have an impact on a company's growth. Ginny NiCarthy's Getting Free: A Handbook for Women in Abusive Relationships sold over 70,000 copies. These sales enabled Seal Press, the publisher, to afford other projects.

Getting on the bestseller lists creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. When a book gets on one of the three major bestseller lists (New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly), it automatically gets more sales. Why? Because bookstores notice and push books that make these lists. Most stores now have special sections in the front of the store which highlight bestselling books. Even better, all the chain stores and many independent booksellers now discount bestsellers thus giving consumers one more reason to buy those books.

Another side effect of publishing a bestseller is that it makes your company more attractive to established authors. As a result, these authors are more likely to submit their best work to you. And as you receive more quality submissions, your chances of discovering and publishing another bestseller increases substantially.

Acropolis Books developed a line of books from Color Me Beautiful, their bestseller written by Carole Jackson. They have since offered Your Colors at Home by Lauren Smith and Rose Bennett Gilbert,Always in Style with Color Me Beautiful by Doris Pooser, Alive with Color by Leatrice Eiseman, and The Winner's Style by Kenneth Karpinski.

How to Make the Bestseller Lists

Given the power of bestseller lists to generate additional sales, you should do whatever you can to get on those lists — especially if your book is a serious contender. While a bestseller is often defined by the lists compiled by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly, these lists are not the only way to measure success. Indeed, both of these lists are more or less works of fiction.

For example, in compiling the most influential bestseller list, the New York Times submits a list of 36 titles (those which their editors think will be the bestselling titles for that week) to about 2,000 bookstores across the country — about 500 independents and 1,500 stores affiliated with local and national chains. The managers at these stores are asked to fill in the number of copies of each title they sold during that week. In addition, there is a space at the end of the lists where stores can write in good-selling titles that didn't make the suggested list. Each week, these reports are compiled, weighted by region and type of store (with independent stores favored), and reported in the Times Book Review. If a book is not selected for the Time's suggested list of 36 titles, it has little chance to make the official bestseller list that week since few bookstores bother to write in any titles. As one bookstore polled by the Times notes, “You can be assured that no book in that space ever makes the bestseller list.”

Publishers Weekly follows a similar procedure in compiling its bestseller list. Both publications rely heavily on advance publicity from the major New York publishers to decide which books might become hot during that week. That's one reason the major publishers hype the print runs and publicity budgets for their front-list titles.

What may surprise you is that it doesn't take a lot of sales to get on a major bestseller list. Vox Populi made #10 on the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction bestseller list with 55,000 copies in print (not necessarily sold). Mating made that same list with only 45,000 copies in print. Robert Boswell's The Mystery Ride landed at #15 with an in-print total of 30,000 copies. And Damage stayed on the list for 14 weeks with net sales of 90,000 copies (about 6,500 copies sold per week). Robertson Davies's Fifth Business made the New York Times bestseller list with fewer than 15,000 copies shipped!

In his August 2, 1993, column in USA Today, Larry King questioned the validity of these lists: “Is Washington out of touch with what's happening or The New York Times best-seller list wrong? I asked five different bookstores about M. Scott Peck's all-time best-selling paperback The Road Less Traveled, which has been on the Times list for 508 weeks. None of the stores had sold even one copy, no copies in five stores. All last week. You figure it out.”

The fact is that these bestseller lists measure sales only over a short period of time. In the March 2, 1992 issue of Publishers Weekly, Daisy Maryles pointed out that the #2 title on PW's hardcover nonfiction bestseller list had sold almost 10,000 copies that week. The #10 bestseller had sold a little over 3,200 copies, while the #15 bestseller had sold less than 1,000 copies. Now that lowest quantity is within reach of almost any publisher, whether large or small.

How Do You Get Books on These Lists?

How do you, especially if you're a small publisher, get past the New York bias of the two major bestseller lists? Simple. Copy the major publishers. Here are a few suggestions you might want to try out when you have a book you think could be a genuine bestseller:

Send letters to the major independent bookstores and chain store outlets in major cities reminding them to think of your book when they fill out the bestseller surveys. Remind them more than once.

You could also send them reading copies or samplers of your major titles. An early sampler to bookstores was one of the things that helped Robert Boswell's The Mystery Ride make it to the bestseller lists.

Send letters to Publishers Weekly and New York Times to remind them that your book has bestseller potential — and to let them know what you are doing to promote the book. Remind them more than once. Note that Daisy Maryles, the editor of PW's Behind the Bestsellers column, is always looking for up-and-coming titles.

Here are a few of the items that will get the editors' attention: review copy of the book, press kit, print run, unusual sales patterns, highlights of the author's promotional schedule, previous sales patterns for the author, and any innovative publicity plans.

Make follow-up phone calls to both groups mentioned above.

Advertise in Publishers Weeklyat least three to four weeks before the book's publication date. If you can afford it, try full-page ads. Prelude Press used this technique, combined with lots of publicity, to boost Do It and Life 101 onto the bestseller lists.

Aggressively promote your books. To propel Life 101 to the #3 spot on the Times list, Prelude sent out at least one news release every week for the three weeks prior to publication date and for the five weeks after. Each news release built upon the previous ones and also announced the successes the book had thus far enjoyed.

Set up an author tour. The major publishers almost always set up author tours for their top books. Recently, some publishers have shifted from the standard author tour to satelite tours, where an author does interviews with local TV shows around the country while sitting in a studio in New York.

Get on a major TV show. Naura Hayden's self- published book, How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time, has sold 1.1 million copies. Her book jumped to the #3 position on the PW list after her appearances on three major talk shows (Oprah, Joan Rivers, and Sonya Live) in one week.

Oprah has been known to launch many bestsellers. During the week of July 12, 1993, Oprah featured one-on-one conversations with five of her favorite authors. Within a week, sales of books by all five authors had increased by as little as 2,500 copies to as much as several hundred thousand copies.

Deepak Chopra's newest title, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, went straight to the top of the national bestseller lists within one week of its publication date of July 14th. Meanwhile, sales of his previous titles also shot up, landing one of them (Perfect Health) on PW's trade paperback bestseller list.

Elie Wiesel was another of the authors Oprah featured during that week of the 12th. During the previous week, his first book, Night, sold 161 copies chainwide in Waldenbooks. During the week of his appearance on Oprah, Waldenbooks sold 1,889 copies of Night. During the next couple of months, Bantam had to go back to press for two printings of 50,000 copies each.

Orders for M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled were 26,000 for the week prior to his appearance on Oprah and 76,000 during the week after.

Andrew Vachss, author of the novel Shella and Another Chance to Get it Right (a collection of poems and essays) was another Oprah guest. While his novel had only a small sales blip as a result of his appearance on Oprah, his other book (published by Dark Horse Publications, a small publisher) sold 2,500 copies via an 800 number that was flashed on the screen during the show.

Radio talk show campaigns can also be effective in establishing a book. John Grey's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was first published in June 1992. After Grey's initial author tour, HarperCollins continued to promote the book with a nationwide radio talk show campaign. Combined with Grey's seminar appearances, the radio talk shows helped the book get on many regional bestseller lists. Finally, an appearance on Donahue on March 19, 1993, caused the book to show up on PW's bestseller list.

Get on a regional bestseller list. Here are just a few of the major newspapers that compile their own bestseller lists: Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle, Detroit Free Press, Houston Post, and Washington Post. Local bookstores as well as the national media pay attention to these regional lists. When Cliff Sheat's Lean Bodies stayed on the Dallas Morning News bestseller list for 30 weeks, the Summit Group was able to generate lots of national interest in the book, including special promotions in both of the major chains. In another instance, Like Water for Chocolate showed up on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list for 20 weeks before making an appearance on a national chart.

Among the top local bestseller lists is the weekly one compiled by the Denver Post. This bestseller list is based on book sales at the Tattered Cover, Barnes & Noble in GreenwoodVillage, Boulder Book Store, and Borders Books in Englewood. Get your book noticed and sold in these four stores, and it could make it onto the local bestseller list. To get noticed, start by booking your authors into these four stores. Work to get customers into these stores for your author events by doing local advertising and publicity. You can start, of course, with getting publicity in the local newspapers.

The Denver Post is one of the two major daily newspapers in the Denver area. It has the strongest book review section. Send review copies and information to the Denver Post, 1560 Broadway, DenverCO80202; 303-820-1624; Fax: 303-820-1679. Letters to the editor: 303-820-1331; Fax: 303-820-1502. Email: . Web:

Get on specialty bookseller lists. For instance, the Christian Booksellers Association and Spring Arbor Distributors compile a monthly bestseller list of religious books. Locus magazine compiles a monthly science fiction bestseller list (based on sales in 25 science fiction specialty bookstores). And the Chronicle of Higher Education compiles a list of the bestselling trade books in college bookstores (based on sales in 150 such stores).

Get on wholesaler bestseller lists. Ingram publishes lists of its bestsellers in the following categories: children's books, computer books, science fiction, cookbooks, and more. Inland publishes an annual Poetry Checklist of its top 50 poetry books. New Leaf lists its top 50 titles in four categories: conscious living, metaphysical, wellness, and young readers. Each month, Quality Books publishes its top 40 library bestsellers. One of my books, Mail Order Selling Made Easier, made Quality Book's Small Press Top 40 for two months.

Get on a magazine bestseller list.Bloomsbury Review features a bestseller list based on sales from 30 top independent bookstores. The Voice Literary Supplement also features such a list. By targeting as few as 30 stores and encouraging sales of your books in these stores, your books could be featured on a national bestseller list. Among specialty magazines, the Lambda Rising Book Report features a list of bestselling gay and lesbian titles.

Publish your major titles during the off seasons when the major publishers are not bringing out their blockbusters. For instance, July and August are slow months. In the May 4, 1992 issue of Publishers Weekly, Daisy Maryles of the Behind the Bestsellers department noted that several books made the list that might not have made it at a busier time: “Since both hardcover bestseller charts are currently soft, the numbers it takes to gain a spot on the bottom of the lists are less competitive.”

Treat your title as a top frontlist title. Give it a knockout cover design. Print and mail galley copies for review at major magazines. Presell the book to major book clubs prior to publication date. And do all the other things that signal to the media and major buyers that you are promoting your book as a major bestseller.

One Word of Caution

If you are serious about promoting a book so it becomes a bestseller, be sure you are prepared to deal with all the accompanying headaches: reprintings, distribution, fulfillment, returns, collections, and the cash flow crunch. More than one small company has found itself in bankruptcy because its owners and managers were not prepared to handle the demand, either materially or psychologically.

Out-Sell the New York TimesBestsellers — Without Breaking a Sweat!

by John Kremer

The following short report features a summary of the points I make during one of my seminar talks: How to out-sell the New York Times bestsellers without breaking a sweat. These are ways that smaller publishers and self-publishers have created bestsellers that have often out-sold books that made the New York Times list.