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What Does It Take to Be a ‘Best-Selling Author’? $3 and 5 Minutes
- jackschultz 11y agoI was going to say that this was a fun hack and neat to read about but the author seemed actually angry about this bug. It's a random thing that's kind of funny and probably will be fixed. Though I am curious about the economics behind it. People really spending money on what they see is a "Best Seller" when it shouldn't be? Seems like most people buy books based on recommendations, not just going to Amazon and clicking on the best seller tab.
- ladybro 11y agoI believe the author is angry at how many people in the author/publishing world flout this "bug" as a way to fool possible customers rather than the bug itself. He mentions working with a lot of NYT best-sellers and I can imagine it would be frustrating for people to claim they are on the same level after doing something like this.
- shloky 11y agoThis. The sheer quantity of terrible content marketers whose sole content is selling the idea that you can become a bestselling author who wear this badge is absurd.
- ktRolster 11y ago> It's a random thing that's kind of funny and probably will be fixed. I don't think it will get fixed. Amazon chose to give the "best seller" title to the top book in each category. There is some justification for this, but mostly it makes people more likely to buy a book when they see the "best seller" label. Thus Amazon is incentivized to put the best seller label on as many books as possible.
- IgorPartola 11y agoAww, just like every person I call at an 800 number is a Customer Executive, every product I buy is Award Winning, every slice of pizza I eat is World Famous, every company I work with is an Industry Leader, etc. This is also how I am the founder, president, CEO, and owner of my company, which is basically just me and my laptop doing contract work every once in a while. Look, this is a stupid bug in their algorithm, and will probably be fixed at some point. Or perhaps the label falls off during hour number 2 when nobody is buying it. There are other ways to hack the Amazon publishing system, like Tim Ferris did when he sent free copies of his book out to people so that they would leave reviews when it went on sale. Does it really matter?
- pdwetz 11y agoA local wine shop near me had hand written notes on their wines. The owner noticed that when the note said "delicious!" it was more likely to be purchased. So now all of the wines are labeled as such. No word on overall sales since then.
- nkozyra 11y ago> Look, this is a stupid bug in their algorithm, and will probably be fixed at some point. How is it a bug in their algorithm? If anything it's a bug in their process. OP found a niche category with so little competition that it was simple to legitimately become the best-selling author by virtue of having the best-selling book (over some time period) in that category? I agree with him that the title is meaningless, but it's not necessarily inaccurate. What Amazon needs to do - that is, if they care about the 'validity' of the best-seller title - is better vet submissions and purchases. One person purchasing multiple copies should probably only count as one purchase for the sake of this distinction, although that might hurt small retailers that buy from Amazon directly. I see this as not much different than claiming you're a World Record Holder because you stacked the most pennies on your big toe (it was 21, for the record).
- IgorPartola 11y agoBest Seller implies loads of people bought the book. Put a absolute floor of a few hundred copies sold, in addition to comparing the relative sales. You don't want people to start questioning your brand (Amazon Best Seller in this case). We all know that World Record Holder doesn't mean much on its own. You have to specify whether it was most pennies stacked on a toe, biggest soap bubble, etc. What TFA points out is pretty much that the title Amazon Best Seller is useless without specifying a category, or possibly not at all.
- reitanqild 11y agoWonderful author credits at the end: > Brent Underwood is the No. 1 best-selling author of Putting My Foot Down and a ...
- dswalter 11y agoIt was a nice touch.
- judah 11y agoAnother bonus is the author's update footnote: >> "Author’s update: Since writing this piece and making my debut, my book has inexplicably been removed from the Amazon catalogue. I have yet to hear from an Amazon representative on the matter, but it is clear that something is afoot."
- armenarmen 11y agoreminds a bit of this: http://thehustle.co/underground-world-of-kindle-ebooks http://thehustle.co/underground-world-of-kindle-ebooks
- BaconJuice 11y agoI wanted to buy this book..seems like it's down now :(
- waynecochran 11y agoIt's not there anymore!?!? -- I was going to purchase it!
- kelvin0 11y agoI don't know which is worse: Amazon's shoddy rating system (for 'bestsellers') or someone using this 'rating' to pass themselves as a first rate author ...
- jonaldomo 11y agoDid amazon pull his book down for low content? Anyways, this is an actual business strategy as the categories is always changing. I was hired by a guy to script which categories have a higher chance than others to get the top spot. The number of views for a category bestseller is staggering.
- cryoshon 11y agoThat's an interesting project. Is this script open source by any chance? It's not of any practical use, but it'd be interesting to graph the fluctuations if there are any.
- Outdoorsman 11y agoThe author is right...it doesn't take a high level of talent, or any at all in his example, to become a "best seller"... I pay no attention to "best seller" labels... I realized quite some time back that my reading time is far more limited than I would like for it to be...I intend to spend the time I do have reading the best I can get my hands on... When looking for a good read I most certainly do not start at Amazon... Rather, I look through lists of the major literary prize winners and select something from them... Pulitzer Prize Winners, National Book Award winners, Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction winners, Man Booker Prize winners...just to name a few... I've yet to be disappointed, even when the topics are somewhat outside my everyday interests and hobbies... A list of the major awards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards#American_literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards#Americ... There's something there for every taste...and you'll benefit from knowing that someone took a great deal of time and care with their efforts...someone writing seriously...
- roymurdock 11y agoGreat recommendation - go to the experts when looking for new material. PS I enjoy your very zen use of ellipses. Softens everything you say...and makes things flow together nicely...also gives space for people to think their own thoughts...
- luchadorvader 11y ago...
- ricardonunez 11y agoTalking about Pulitzer. I read an article about how many people were putting Pulitzer Nominee in their titles when anybody can be a nominee. Winning it's a different story.
- rpgmaker 11y ago> I realized quite some time back that my reading time is far more limited than I would like for it to be...I intend to spend the time I do have reading the best I can get my hands on... As readers we have to come to terms with the fact that we will miss out on many good books, there just isn't enough time to read them all in a lifetime. I decided stop reading the ones that aren't that interesting to me after reading (roughly) 30%-40%[1] of the book. If after this it hasn't grabbed my interest then it just isn't my kind of book, at least in my experience. Will I miss out on the rare book that gets its act together after the 60% mark? Sure, but in my experience those are very rare and I'd rather miss out on them than spend the remaining time chasing the elusive "it gets really good after the 60% mark" books. > I've yet to be disappointed, even when the topics are somewhat outside my everyday interests and hobbies... My experience has been the opposite of this. I have found a lot of duds in those lists (I'm talking about fiction books specifically)... [1] All percentages are approximations.
- Eiriksmal 11y agoAn elegant demonstration of a technique that works for most products on Amazon. Isn't it incredible how virtually every product you look at on Amazon is a #1 best seller in its category? At the very least, it'll be in the top 15. They only sell the best-possible products on there, right? Oh, it's only because the categories are so endlessly varied--er, "precise," that each one conveniently only has 8-15 products in it.
- kardos 11y agoOr perhaps, miraculously, you're only looking at the best of the best products?
- im_down_w_otp 11y agoThis. Is. Hysterical. I literally cried from laughing several times as I was reading. Can you start a companion series titled, "On the Other Hand: An Exploration of Misplaced Gloves"?
- searine 11y agoA better question. What does it take to hit best seller status on a top level category? About 5000 books sold in a day or. Thats... a lot harder (or just more expensive) to fake.
- munificent 11y agoIt really depends on the period they use to calculate it. My book was very briefly the #1 programming book on Amazon[1], which is, I think, a decent-sized category. I don't know the exact numbers, but I probably sold a few hundred copies that day. But, more importantly, I think I had a narrow spike of a lot of sales in a couple of hours right when the book first launched. [1]: http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-launch-went/ http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-lau...
- ryanholiday 11y agoIt depends. They're calculated hourly. Right place right time...could be just a couple dozen. Books sell less copies than people think.
- drited 11y agoThat's interesting, do you have a sense for what the incremental sales were from having the #1 designation?
- petercooper 11y agoGary Vaynerchuk did an 8 hour preorder drive yesterday. From what I recall, it peaked at 211ish on Amazon in that time (giving him #1 in most of his subcategories) and they said they had about 8000 preorders in the bucket, most of which were via Amazon. TBH I was gobsmacked he wasn't at #1 given the book market.
- t0mk 11y agotldr anyone? I read 25%, it was bragging and fancy talk. How is the system actually tricked?
- Joeboy 11y agoAmazon gave his book a "#1 Best Seller" rating even though it only sold three copies (one to the author and two to his friends). It was actually (presumably) the best selling book in a very niche category, over a very short space of time.
- robbles 11y agoIt seems like Amazon could fix this in a straightforward way without losing the "hourly updated" part of their bestseller list - just compute a longer time period for each hour, like a rolling average. That way the current bestseller still updates every hour, but they'd need to have the most sales over the last week/month instead.
- Xcelerate 11y agoIf he had played up his "book" as fine art, he could have made millions. Kind of like how this guy took photos of other people's photos and sold them for exorbitant amounts: http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-lewis-instagram-photos-100000-dollars-new-york-new-portraits-copyright-2015-5?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-lewis-instagram-photo...
- hmans 11y agoHow did Amazon approve this?
- blister 11y agoAs someone that just published a book through that process, they don't actually care about the content or what it is that your book is about. They're just reviewing it to make sure that there aren't any glaring formatting errors that will cause it to print poorly or make their final product look bad. They check the DPIs of images, margins, and technical things like that. Absolutely no regard is given for content, and this, IMHO, is exactly how it should be. Self-publishing empowers authors. Sometimes we get junk like 50 Shades of Grey and other times we get gems like The Martian.
- nathancahill 11y agoTL;DR: Choose an arbitrary small Amazon category to publish your book in. You'll be #1!
- mring33621 11y agoFor the inevitable movie version, I'd like to see Idris Elba or Jake Gyllenhaal cast as the foot.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Left_Foot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Left_Foot (Not the movie of the best-seller.)
- cbhl 11y agoIs it actually still possible to buy the alleged book? I couldn't find it with a cursory search of Amazon.com.
- guelo 11y agoAmazon would be smart to create an official "Amazon Best Selling Author" certification and protecting it by going after anybody claiming a fake Amazon title. Unfortunately and strangely, Amazon doesn't seem to care about this kind of reputation management, for example their product reviews have become a spam quagmire, and Amazon actually encourages it with their Vine reviewer program.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoOkay I completely understand the concept of the post and get the sadness and humor all at the same time. In an era where attentiveness and long-form reading seems to be in distinct decline, distinctions within the marketplace losing meaning hurts. I'm sure customers will eventually adapt though...but this quote: >I wrote this post because I’m tired of vanity titles and success without quality. ...just makes me laugh, because we're talking about an industry that most recently is probably the most guilty of "success without quality" by way of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise and all the buckets and buckets of money it made. Self-help being a juggernaut of sales year after year. Obvious derivative slop like Pride and Prejudice & Zombies and the wish-fulfillment nostalgia collage of Ready Player One aren't bringing a new enlightenment to society, practically speaking. >I hope my story illustrates that the best marketing tactic you can use for a book is to write a great book that actually sells over the long term. Actually, it kind of illustrates the opposite, in that "a book uploaded every five minutes" isn't a signal-to-noise ratio that really makes much of any sense. The only reason to write a quality book is vanity at this point. The day that an entity - a startup, a publisher, a legacy firm - can figure out how to intelligently and profitably cull 'good quality' new artists from the loads and loads of self-publishing writers, musicians, or cinema/visual creators out there on their own and bring viewers is the day artists and audiences probably start meeting the monetization in the middle.
- Outdoorsman 11y ago>>The only reason to write a quality book is vanity at this point.<< No, not always...the reason some strive to write a "quality" book, is not money, though for some that would be nice...a bit of fame, as well... Money is not a god...it's a fungible thing that people can use to buy almost whatever they wish...things to play with, time to pursue interests, security for those they love... Some are "driven" to write, and for such people writing well is the goal...this is because they see what can happen when a writer writes well...a great work can define a time, change minds for the better, illuminate otherwise overlooked aspects of life...and lives... Writing is a passion, for some, just like coding or problem solving is to some of us in this community...or, like hitting a "home run" financially is for entrepreneurs... They didn't choose this passion, it chose them... I admire them...let's not sell them short...they're much like us...passions differ...
- eru 11y agoGood PR, Amazon! They just made me read a tutorial of how to upload a book to their side, and convinced me it's easy enough to give it a try if I ever wanted to publish a book.
- orionblastar 11y agoSelf-Publishing on Amazon Kindle is easy. It is harder to sell and make sure you use good writing in your book to correct grammar mistakes. To self-publish you just fill out forms and upload a Word document and JPG file for the cover. Then select copyright and were to sell it and for how much. It usually takes 24 hours to be approved.
- joelgrus 11y agoConfession: I am guilty of this. Well, sort of. I actually did write a book, and it did sell more than 3 copies, and now I put "best selling author" on my resume, on account of my book being #1 in its category (sometimes) and #1 on oreilly.com (sometimes). So far no one has gotten bent out of shape about it (or maybe no one has looked at my resume), I assume because they're smart enough to know that a "best selling" data science book is not on the NYT list outselling Stephen King and 50 Shades of Gray and Hunger Games, it's bestselling among "Books / Computers / Data & Data Analytics" or whatever. Having put my bias on the table, I have a hard time getting worked up about what this guy did, for the following reason: "Whoa, you're a bestselling author? What did you write?" "It's not a book, it's a picture of my foot." "Oh. That's kind of strange. How many copies did it sell?" "Three." "..." I mean, it's not like there's some kind of special club where "best selling author" allows you to cut in line or anything. Is there? If there is, please let me know.
- kriro 11y agoWell isn't that the point of the article. Showing how absurd this is and shaming the "I'll make you a bestselling author" snake oil sales people? I love that he explicitly names some of the offenders.
- rahimnathwani 11y agoSlightly off topic, but your book is awesome. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who knows Python (or programming in general) but for whom math-notation-heavy stats/ML books are daunting. My first pass through was a while back, but I still find myself going back to the example code for quick refreshers about key concepts.
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- EwanG 11y agoHas been going on for a while. As I wrote about a couple years ago with my own experience: http://a1.blogspot.com/2014/08/zoes-secret-is-3-at-amazon.html http://a1.blogspot.com/2014/08/zoes-secret-is-3-at-amazon.ht...
- EGreg 11y agoSo the easy fix is to make the bestseller list look at the last week, not hour. Wow.
- computator 11y ago> These days, over one million books are published each year, with at least half of these self-published. The biggest thing I got out of that article is that the Internet has truly killed the prospect of making a living as an author if you're competing with half a million other self-published books every year. I'd say that no one should go into any of the following professions with any expectation of making any money at all: 1) Writing of any kind (fiction, non-fiction, technical articles, journalism -- forget about it!) 2) Digital art of any kind (see DeviantArt for millions of super-talented creations that haven't earned a cent) 3) Photography of any kind (see Shutterfly for millions of photos better than anything you ever took and yet no one will ever pay for) 4) Composing music or lyrics It kind of surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it.
- vollmond 11y agoThe exception for all of these would be individual, contracted work. IE, wedding photographers will be in demand long after any mass-market commercial photography dies out.
- ghaff 11y agoAlthough, even in that case, as was discussed on another thread recently, there's a lot of hollowing out going on. Tier 1 wedding photographers with distinctive styles in big demand will continue to be able to charge big $$ for those willing and able to afford them. But the guy that used to have a local monopoly mostly by dint of having spent some dollars on gear and an office-front is being undercut by gig workers with DSLRs. Most people don't care about their wedding photos being "art." And many young couples will take the package that costs half as much.
- ghaff 11y ago>It kind of surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it. Mostly by writing software for a specific business purpose. There's still money in custom content in most of the other areas you list as well--mostly at the high-end of the scale. You're right that it's increasingly hard to just throw your creations out and hope someone will pay much for them.
- edent 11y agoNot really a new phenomenon. I sold 4 comics and was second only to Neil Gaiman's Sandman. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/08/how-to-crack-amazons-kindle-best-seller-list-sell-4-books/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/08/how-to-crack-amazons-kindle... It's an even less useful a heuristic than "As Seem On TV!"
- thaumasiotes 11y agoTo be fair, I think a good number of people use "As seen on TV!" as a reasonably strong recommendation not to buy the thing, if only for social class purposes. I would never even consider buying something "As seem on TV!" ;)
- ommunist 11y agoPlease register my complaint to Amazon. I want to buy your bestselling title! They have no rights to deprive me as a reader. I love feet!
- mattkevan 11y agoThe signal-to-noise ratio for Kindle books is out of hand. Self publishing can be fantastic as it lowers the bar to entry, enabling authors to be heard who wouldn't normally get past the traditional gatekeepers. Andy Weir's 'The Martian' is a great example of this. Conversely, finding anything decent on the Kindle store by browsing - especially Kindle Unlimited - is difficult due to the avalanche of crap which clogs up every category. And I guess it's not really in Amazon's interest to improve this - money is money after all, and they want people to buy these 'books' otherwise 'authors' may stop publishing to the platform. However, even if the books are unreadable, there's a lot of entertainment to be had from the covers: http://kindlecoverdisasters.tumblr.com http://kindlecoverdisasters.tumblr.com
- Aardwolf 11y agoPer definition of the word "best", there can be only one, so I never took that term serious
- hippich 11y agoTo everybody who saying something along lines "amazon should do X Y Z": amazon's business is clusterfuck, but profitable one. They have TONS of issues with ranking, process, UI, etc,etc,etc. Almost every single problem requires reaching through seller support to engineering team, or someone having closer DB access. Categorization, fields are all SUBcategory-depending. The way you get included into certain categories is also depends on product/subcategory. Stuff sometimes simply doesn't work. In 2015 alone they switched between three different promotion offerings. I am selling on amazon and deal with it often :) It looks like it is constant growing pains.