Why Are There So Many Best Selling Authors?
And are they? Really?
If you filter for authors on LinkedIn, you will be astounded to discover just how many “best-selling” authors there are. Wow! Are all these people just raking in the big author bucks?
Probably not. Maybe a few are, but most of them aren’t living on their book royalties.
Amazon Bestseller vs. NYT/WSJ/USA Today
First of all, the vast majority of these people claiming best-selling author status are Amazon best-selling authors. Do you know how I know? Because if you’re a New York Times best-selling author you’re going to say so. Same with The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Hell, if I were a New York Times bestselling author, I’d rent a plane with a big banner sign saying so and fly it over every town I ever lived in. I’d seriously consider having it tattooed on me. I would not just put “best-selling author” in my bio. No, ma’am.
You have to sell a lot of books to hit these lists. Wall Street Journal and USA Today are a little easier because they’ll use a combination of brick and mortar stores and online sales. You still need to sell over 5,000 books in your launch week to hit these lists and if you are unlucky enough to launch when other big books are launching, you might not make it.