5 ms·

Hacking The NY Times Best Seller List

25 points by BrandonWatson 17y ago

electromagnetic 17y ago
Pre-ordering isn't really gaming the system, it's been understood that having a following pretty much ensures you're going to hit onto a list. The real question here is whether or not these two can turn their online-audience into an offline-audience. With authors I've frequently decided to become an online fan after being an offline fan for up to years. However I've rarely done it the other way, and never for a book.
- BrandonWatson 17y ago
  Keith does a once a year comedy show on his birthday (Apr 15) in NYC and they get fans coming in from all over the world to see it. He's not headlining Madison Square Garden yet, but it's impressive regardless.
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    It's the loyal fans that will pay your bills, but the loyal fans aren't likely to get you on the NYT best sellers list (unless you're Stephen King). I would be interested on what percentage of his online readership purchases his book on pre-order/first week vs how many of his readers are buying it in 6 months to a year.
- MichaelApproved 17y ago
  So far they're #1 in a couple of categories and #119 overall.
ramit 17y ago
I am a New York Times best-seller and I would be happy to answer questions about how I went from blog --> book --> products, especially about the challenges of getting people to pay online. My book: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 My blog: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com Let me know if you guys have questions about monetizing content, book sales, or the psychology of getting people online to pay. There is so much interesting stuff I've learned over the last few years.
- BrandonWatson 17y ago
  I bought your book months ago...great content. It was easier to have you translate the content to family than for me to do it - I'm not a published author, so I am much less believable. :) I would love to email you some questions about my book project and where to take it from where it is. I am blwatson at gmail
  - ramit 17y ago
    Thanks! Let's do it here so others can benefit from the back-and-forth conversation. You can email me your super-private questions separately.
    - BrandonWatson 17y ago
      Great idea on leaving the content for others to share. I had put together an outline a year ago for a book. The working title is The Failing Point. I started writing, and built up a good head of steam. I knew that getting a publishing deal as an unknown was almost impossible. Since the content is in essay form, I started posting them online in blog format at the url www.TheFailingPoint.com. I got into a 2x per week posting rhythm, and the strategy was to do this for the first 2 chapters, over the course of 2 months, and then stop. I had planned on taking the "success" of building traffic to a publisher. I didn't want to keep posting all of the content that would eventually be in the book at the risk of putting off any potential authors. In the second of 2 months, I generated 20K uniques without spending any money. Links were posted here and Digg. I also tried to incorporate TweetMeme (great) and Yahoo Buzz (useless). Well, the few publishers I was able to get the proposal to have either passed or taken their time in getting back to me (which is the same as a pass). So now what to do? Based on the feedback I saw in the comments here at Hacker News, and emails I got, people appreciated the content. My "why" for doing this is not to say that I am a published author. I'd love to make some extra money, sure, but mostly because I feel like I have a unique set of experiences and am a decent enough story teller that the content is useful to those who would come after me. It's the content I would have liked to have seen before I embarked on my startups. This project is well outside of my comfort zone, and perhaps I relied too much on a "if you post it, they will come" strategy. Now that the first two chapters are out there, and I have no traction with the few publishers I have approached, what would you suggest?
aplusbi 17y ago
I'm always tempted to pick up Naked Came the Stranger whenever I'm at the bookstore, but I know I'll never read it. THAT book is truly the result of hacking the best seller list.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
tbrooks 17y ago
I worked for a media company a few years back and we would hack the NYT by selling "limited edition" autographed copies of books. We paid authors $5/signature and sold the book for $10 over MSRP. The author pre-signed thousands of books that we bought from major retailers at a discount (orders in the 10s of thousands). Then we organized speaking events and book tours the week the book released. On the book tour, when the stores ran out of stock they would buy our autographed copies because the publisher couldn't ship them fast enough. Any books that we didn't sell back to the retailers, we would sell on our online store at markup. The key to hacking the system was negotiating with the retailer to report (on Nielsen BookScan) X number of books on release day, X number the day after, and so on...
- sireat 17y ago
  Seems like an extremely risky strategy, even established authors happen to write books that sell badly. If you hit on a book, which you couldn't sell, what then? Probably a good idea to filter only the "good" books, but how?
  - tbrooks 17y ago
    I don't think so, we only handled authors that had radio and/or television shows. Radio is great for driving local traffic to book stores. We were 4/4 for #1 NY Times Bestsellers.
jaboutboul 17y ago
Hey Ramit, can you talk a little but more about your comment on "many startups overvalue social media and ignore channels that actually convert. Hint: Twitter. (Test it and see for yourself.)" Which channels are better than others for securing conversions? Which outlets SHOULD startups be focusing on?

25 points by BrandonWatson 17y ago

Pre-ordering isn't really gaming the system, it's been understood that having a following pretty much ensures you're going to hit onto a list. The real question here is whether or not these two can turn their online-audience into an offline-audience. With authors I've frequently decided to become an online fan after being an offline fan for up to years. However I've rarely done it the other way, and never for a book.

BrandonWatson 17y ago
Keith does a once a year comedy show on his birthday (Apr 15) in NYC and they get fans coming in from all over the world to see it. He's not headlining Madison Square Garden yet, but it's impressive regardless.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  It's the loyal fans that will pay your bills, but the loyal fans aren't likely to get you on the NYT best sellers list (unless you're Stephen King). I would be interested on what percentage of his online readership purchases his book on pre-order/first week vs how many of his readers are buying it in 6 months to a year.
MichaelApproved 17y ago
So far they're #1 in a couple of categories and #119 overall.

ramit 17y ago

I am a New York Times best-seller and I would be happy to answer questions about how I went from blog --> book --> products, especially about the challenges of getting people to pay online. My book: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 My blog: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com Let me know if you guys have questions about monetizing content, book sales, or the psychology of getting people online to pay. There is so much interesting stuff I've learned over the last few years.

BrandonWatson 17y ago
I bought your book months ago...great content. It was easier to have you translate the content to family than for me to do it - I'm not a published author, so I am much less believable. :) I would love to email you some questions about my book project and where to take it from where it is. I am blwatson at gmail
- ramit 17y ago
  Thanks! Let's do it here so others can benefit from the back-and-forth conversation. You can email me your super-private questions separately.
  - BrandonWatson 17y ago
    Great idea on leaving the content for others to share. I had put together an outline a year ago for a book. The working title is The Failing Point. I started writing, and built up a good head of steam. I knew that getting a publishing deal as an unknown was almost impossible. Since the content is in essay form, I started posting them online in blog format at the url www.TheFailingPoint.com. I got into a 2x per week posting rhythm, and the strategy was to do this for the first 2 chapters, over the course of 2 months, and then stop. I had planned on taking the "success" of building traffic to a publisher. I didn't want to keep posting all of the content that would eventually be in the book at the risk of putting off any potential authors. In the second of 2 months, I generated 20K uniques without spending any money. Links were posted here and Digg. I also tried to incorporate TweetMeme (great) and Yahoo Buzz (useless). Well, the few publishers I was able to get the proposal to have either passed or taken their time in getting back to me (which is the same as a pass). So now what to do? Based on the feedback I saw in the comments here at Hacker News, and emails I got, people appreciated the content. My "why" for doing this is not to say that I am a published author. I'd love to make some extra money, sure, but mostly because I feel like I have a unique set of experiences and am a decent enough story teller that the content is useful to those who would come after me. It's the content I would have liked to have seen before I embarked on my startups. This project is well outside of my comfort zone, and perhaps I relied too much on a "if you post it, they will come" strategy. Now that the first two chapters are out there, and I have no traction with the few publishers I have approached, what would you suggest?

aplusbi 17y ago

I'm always tempted to pick up Naked Came the Stranger whenever I'm at the bookstore, but I know I'll never read it. THAT book is truly the result of hacking the best seller list.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

tbrooks 17y ago

I worked for a media company a few years back and we would hack the NYT by selling "limited edition" autographed copies of books. We paid authors $5/signature and sold the book for $10 over MSRP. The author pre-signed thousands of books that we bought from major retailers at a discount (orders in the 10s of thousands). Then we organized speaking events and book tours the week the book released. On the book tour, when the stores ran out of stock they would buy our autographed copies because the publisher couldn't ship them fast enough. Any books that we didn't sell back to the retailers, we would sell on our online store at markup. The key to hacking the system was negotiating with the retailer to report (on Nielsen BookScan) X number of books on release day, X number the day after, and so on...

sireat 17y ago
Seems like an extremely risky strategy, even established authors happen to write books that sell badly. If you hit on a book, which you couldn't sell, what then? Probably a good idea to filter only the "good" books, but how?
- tbrooks 17y ago
  I don't think so, we only handled authors that had radio and/or television shows. Radio is great for driving local traffic to book stores. We were 4/4 for #1 NY Times Bestsellers.

jaboutboul 17y ago

Hey Ramit, can you talk a little but more about your comment on "many startups overvalue social media and ignore channels that actually convert. Hint: Twitter. (Test it and see for yourself.)" Which channels are better than others for securing conversions? Which outlets SHOULD startups be focusing on?