In the past 15 months, we've had 10 books on the bestseller list. When I say "bestseller" I mean major lists: New York Times, Wall street Journal, et al. Still, even after numerous books and a variety of lists, the "list" itself still confounded me, so I decided to do a dinky investigate to find out what it de facto takes to hit a list.

First off, the term "hit a list" can mean hitting a bestseller list at any point of entry. This can even be the bottom 100. Many books that hit a list are never viewed by consumers, they land there, stay for a week, maybe longer or shorter, and then vanish. The numbers and metric for this can be tricky and in fact, not entirely accurate. If you've ever tried to hit a list and found yourself disgusted with the odds, I hope this report sheds some light on the ins and outs of how the process works. I do recommend, though, that you do some investigate on your own; there are some excellent blog posts out there that look at the finite pieces of these lists and how they are constructed.

First off, let's look at the facts. Bestseller lists vary by season, market, and genre. First, let's look at seasons.

Surprisingly enough, how many copies you need to sell of your book will often depend on when you issue it. Pre-Christmas releases, for example, want bigger amount than a issue that happens in May. Why is this? Well, the holiday should speak for itself, and the same is true for key fall months like September. The hotter the month (not in climatic characteristic but in publishing releases), the harder it is to get onto a list.

The next piece of this is reporting. an additional one piece that might surprise you is that not all reporting is accurate. Never mind the fact that reporting can be slow; you could hit 20,000 sales of your book in October but not see this reporting until November for example, but they can also be inaccurate, and there's a whole shop share that's never reported on. Technical, scholarly, law-related books can make up over two-thirds of the book shop and are never reported on. Christian titles work the same way. You might say, "Well, what about The Shack?" This Christian title hit a list because it was sold en masse in sell outlets and not sequestered to Christian retailers that don't get the benefit of reporting to the lists.

Finally, let's look at list structure. Each list pulls book data differently, meaning that the New York Times does not pull trade book data, whereas the Usa Today list does. Usa Today also pulls these titles onto a single list, whereas the New York Times divides these lists up by genre.

This is from my daughter:

“I love her because she is my two favorite colors and she is a unicorn. When you unfold her she turns into a pillow, and when you fold her back up she turns back into a unicorn! I rate this five stars!” TCU Pillow pet