Update: Read Brent’s interview with the Observer about the response to a fake book being posted on Amazon and how it unexpectedly became a real one in the process.
You are reading: How many books need to be sold to be a bestseller on amazon
I’d like to tell you about the biggest lie in book publishing. appears in the biographies and social media profiles of almost every “author” working today. is the word “best seller”.
It’s not about how the new york times list is biased (although it is). It’s not about how authors buy their place on various national bestseller lists by buying their own books in bulk (although they do). no, it’s about the much more insidious title of “amazon bestseller”, and how it is complete and utter nonsense.
here’s what’s happened in the book industry in recent years: as amazon has become the big dog in the world of books, “amazon bestseller” status has become synonymous of being a real bestseller. this is not true, and I can prove it.
*****
last week, i put a fake book on amazon. I took a photo of my foot, uploaded it to amazon, and within hours, I had achieved “no. 1 best selling status, complete with the orange banner and all.
How many copies did I need to sell so I could call my mom and celebrate my new accomplishments as an author? three. yes, a total of three copies to become a best-selling author. And I bought two of those copies myself!
The reason people aspire to be called a “best-selling author” is because it dramatically increases their credibility and “personal brand.” it can establish you as a thought leader. You can show that you not only wrote a book, but that the market considered it better than other books. it is a status symbol, one that lends itself to the prestige of one of man’s oldest pastimes. at last, I had acquired this coveted title for myself.
I’m a partner in a marketing company called brass check. Over the years, we’ve helped launch 30 legitimate New York Times bestsellers (including several in the coveted #1 spot). my company has helped sell over 5 million books and has advised or managed book launches with all the major publishers, including amazon.
We have important rules at my company about the projects we take on. We don’t work with authors whose books we wouldn’t read ourselves, and we don’t guarantee best-seller status. We say no to more work than we say yes, but these principles help us avoid the gimmicks, the one-hit wonders that don’t seek to write great books, but seek to fool people into thinking they’ve done it.
but it’s starting to feel a bit like a losing battle. because those authors are everywhere these days. the title of my fake book was “putting my foot down” for a reason: i am completely exhausted with the fake “authors” and the swindlers and charlatans who conspire with these people, the cottage industry that has been built around them, sale of courses, instructions and tricks. A quick Google search turns up dozens of “best selling books”, courses, packages, schools, secrets, summits, and webinars that teach you how to become a “best selling author”. hell, this guy even promises to show you how to be a best-selling author “even if you have no book ideas, no writing skills, or no clue where to start” in a “5-step formula.”
heart-focused media will give you “guaranteed bestseller status” for just “3 payments of $1333”, even though they inform you that “book sales are not guaranteed”. denise cassino promises that with her services, “you’ll always be a ‘best-selling author,’ a label that will open doors for you that would otherwise be closed”…for just $3,250. Jesse Krieger in “Bestseller Campaign Plan” encourages you to “Imagine searching Amazon and seeing… your book on the bestseller lists alongside your hero authors” and lets you know you can fulfill that dream for just $ 997. peggy mccoll has “released perhaps more bestsellers than anyone else” and she’ll show you how for just $2,497.
sigh.
Getting to the bestseller lists used to be a real mark of distinction, because there were fewer lists and fewer authors (and before e-books, the price of books was also pretty universal). The New York Times list has been the most prestigious, published in one form or another since 1931. In 1942, a national list made its debut, compiled from “reports from leading booksellers in 22 cities.” In the mid-2000s, more than 4,000 bookstores were surveyed each week to determine who deserved to be on the list. The Wall Street Journal’s list, which has been around since 2009, is based on Nielsen’s Bookscan and tends to focus on a smaller number of categories. usa list uu. today it is also prestigious, but rather a general list.
Anyone in the industry can tell you that these lists have their problems. there is a barely concealed editorial bias. Bookscan, the database that tabulates book sales, inexplicably doesn’t include Amazon e-book sales. There is even the possibility of manipulation, as described in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article called “The Mystery of Peak Book Sales.” even so, they remain relatively difficult to crack. In most cases, your book not only has to be good enough to be published by a legitimate publisher, it has to outsell all other books, past and present, even if you pay for it out of pocket. . we’ve had clients who sold close to 10,000 copies in a single week fail to land on these charts.
because of the high bar, the term “best selling author” was a term with some meaning. it was seen as something that was earned through a lot of hard work. but today, that designation has changed, for the worse. It’s like when you see a food described as “natural”. the fda doesn’t actually regulate that term, so it’s basically meaningless.
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It’s about time readers (and the media, which breathlessly repeats these authors’ best-selling claims) took notice. so let me show you exactly how i became a #1 amazon bestseller for $2 and a picture of my foot in less than five minutes (with screenshots and proof). Hopefully, as my partner Ryan has said, once you understand how sausage is made, you won’t want to eat it anymore.
step 1: write my book (~2 seconds)
I didn’t feel like writing a book, so I just took a picture of my foot. I called the book “putting my foot down” and included a page with, you guessed it, a picture of my foot.
step 2: upload and format on amazon (~3 minutes)
They say choosing a title is the hardest part of writing a book. don’t know!
verification of rights and choice of categories
Amazon has its own “bestseller” rankings for books, based on categories. If you’re in the top 100 in your Amazon category, you’ll see a “Best Seller Ranking” below the title. a #1 book in any category will earn a “#1 Best Seller” banner next to the title. this lets potential customers know that the book is the best-selling item in that category. if a book ranks first in a category for months, that’s saying something. Beat it up for an hour (which is how often amazon updates its rankings), take a screenshot of it, and call himself a “best-selling author” for life? well…
a few more things to know, in case you want to try this at home:
- amazon has over 500 book categories, down to things as specific as transpersonal movements and freemasonry studies (see below)
- when you publish on amazon, amazon lets you choose the category where your book is tracked.
- you can set the price of your book, up to $0.99.
i decided my foot was worthy of the “transpersonal” category in psychology books and “freemasonry & secret societies” in the social sciences category. i’ve always wanted to have an affiliation with freemasons.
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designing my cover
amazon has a handy “cover maker” that will place text over any image and create your cover in seconds. I chose my foot for the image.
waiting for amazon approval
the wait is the worst part of the process. what happens if amazon rejects my foot?
never mind, we’re approved!
the amazon page is active
A few hours later, another book is added to Amazon’s extraordinary catalog. one small step for me… one giant leap for the digital world.
step 3: ask 3 friends to buy the book (~1 minute)
aaron always has my back, no questions asked :
The time spent on this promotion could have been even shorter if Nick hadn’t asked so many annoying questions.
step 4: sell some copies
burst onto the scene with three copies sold in the first few hours. look at that hockey stick growth!
step 5: we did it! #1
success! just a reminder to the kids that if you work hard, have an iphone with a working camera, and have no shame, you too can be a number one bestselling author. what a thrill to see that #1 bestselling banner! time to put drake on repeat and update my linkedin profile to include the #1 selling author.
not just a list either. the book was so popular that it also made it to #2 and #3 in the “Freemasonry” category.
leading the pack. sorry monika and ken.
Amazon is the world’s largest book retailer. They carry more than 33 million titles and ship them virtually anywhere in the world. At the same time, Amazon also allows authors to publish titles directly on the platform, without the approval of traditional publishers or, as my stand-up book demonstrates, without any barriers. In 2014, a new book was added to Amazon every five minutes.
Gone are the days of having to be selected to publish a book. Gone are the days of having to go to a bookstore to see what’s available. now you can check online, with real-time reviews and real-time bestseller rankings. not surprisingly, as the barriers to entry in the book business fell, so did the quality of the books being produced. These days, more than a million books are published each year, with at least half of these self-published. so it’s almost obvious that, given the volume, you could rise to the top of a category with very little sales. And yet, despite the fact that it’s as easy as I’ve shown it to become an amazon bestseller, those same people can cash in on the goodwill and prestige built up in the title of “bestselling author of sales”.
*****
I didn’t write this to make my foot famous. I wrote this post because I am tired of vain titles and success without quality. I also wanted to show how simple it is to call yourself a best-selling author, in the hope that people who buy books will become more demanding customers. Remember, if I can make a “bestselling author” out of my foot for less than $3 and a few minutes of work, you must take anyone who presents themselves as such with a grain of salt.
To Authors: I hope my story illustrates that the best marketing tactic you can use for a book is to write a great book that really sells in the long run. it’s easy to get sucked in by best-seller lists, sales figures, speaking fees, and everything else ephemera in this industry. Don’t let all this make you lose sight of the importance of quality and authority in your work. anyone can be a one-hit wonder; Focus on crafting a book that will sell for decades.
As for me and my foot, I’m waiting for a call from a movie studio to get the rights to the movie and work on the sequel. the working title is “put the right foot forward”. new york times list, here we come.
Author update: I’ve written a revised and expanded version of Putting My Foot Down, which you can find here.
Brent Underwood is the No. 1 best-selling author of “Putting My Foot Down“ and a partner at Brass Check. 
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