Tyler WagnerFounder, Authorsunite.com · Authorsunite.com and Partnerprofits.io Founder - #1 WSJ Bestselling Author - Book Publisher - Book Marketer - 4,000+ Authors Served - Millions Of Books Sold By Clients - Investor

How the 5 major best seller lists work

Name: How the 5 major best seller lists work
Uploaded: 2023-02-23T16:00:33+00:00
Duration: 1 min 43 s
Channel: Tyler Wagner
Description: In this instructional video, the speaker breaks down the mechanics of the five major U.S. book bestseller lists—Amazon, Barnes & Noble, USA Today, and…

23 Feb 2023 · 2 min

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1:43

In this instructional video, the speaker breaks down the mechanics of the five major U.S. book bestseller lists—Amazon, Barnes & Noble, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal—and offers concrete strategies for authors and marketers to achieve bestseller status on each. Amazon’s list is driven by an hourly algorithm; concentrating a large number of sales (roughly 100‑1,000 depending on category) into a single day can trigger a spike that lands a title on the list. Barnes & Noble maintains a store‑wide top‑100 list, typically requiring 200‑300 sales in a day. USA Today’s weekly top‑150 list demands about 5,000+ sales in a week, with the additional condition that at least 500 of those sales come from a secondary bookstore (e.g., Barnes & Noble). The Wall Street Journal’s top‑10 nonfiction list mirrors Amazon’s nonfiction top‑10, so monitoring Amazon’s rankings can predict WSJ placement. The speaker also notes practical challenges, such as the need for a supportive network to generate the sales surge, and the impact of personal introversion on executing these strategies.

Chapters

there's 5 major lists. So for Amazon, for example, it's basically an hourly algorithm. So that one is the easiest of the bestseller lists. Strategy for that would be line up all your sales and marketing efforts to hit on one day, and then you'll get a huge spike in the algorithm, and then you'll become an Amazon bestseller. So depending on the category, you could get anywhere from like 100 to 1,000 sales in a day. In some categories, even less, you know, let's say 100, and you'll be an Amazon bestseller. And Amazon, if you have a lot of friends, it's pretty easy. If you don't have a lot of friends. If you're more introverted and you don't talk to a lot of people, then it's going to be hard because basically if you, you just got to line up 100 sales in a day and you're pretty safe. So that's how that works. Barnes Noble is a top 100 list in the whole store. That one, if you got like 200, 300 sales in a day, you'd hit that one. USA Today, which was recently suspended because they laid off a bunch of people, and one of the women they laid off was the woman who did the weekly list. That's a top 150 list in the The way that one works is if you get about 5,000+ sales in a week, then you'll hit that with one caveat. You want at least 500 sales in a secondary bookstore, right? So say if you got 5,000 sales, you'd want like 4,500 on Amazon and like 5,600 on Barnes Noble. Wall Street Journal's a top 10, and that's basically a top 10 nonfiction list. So kind of an easy way to find out even before it's published to see which books will be on that list is if you go to Amazon and look at the nonfiction category, the top 10 books that are selling in that category will essentially translate over to that list.