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On the other hand, if you can sell the "5,000 to 10,000 copies in a week" that is the supposed threshold for getting notice from the NY Times, do you really nee
by moron4hire 6y ago
On the other hand, if you can sell the "5,000 to 10,000 copies in a week" that is the supposed threshold for getting notice from the NY Times, do you really need help selling your book? Selling books gets you on the list, getting on the list sells books. Which is the bigger effect?
Given the NY Times growing irrelivance in the market, the high-profile cases of having their list gamed more than once, their ongoing war against their own users with the 3rd party tracking and bullshit they pull over cancellations, I somehow doubt their list is having much of an impact on anyone.
- jfengel 6y agoI dunno. I do have an indirect personal experience: a podcaster wrote a book, and asked all of his followers to pre-order it in the hopes of getting on the NYT bestseller list. Which I did, and it did. I don't know how much that helped, but the underlying logic makes sense. He had a medium-sized niche audience, but their word of mouth wasn't going to sell a lot of extra copies. This put the book out on a world stage. And it just so happened that this particular book (a nerdy exploration of the politics of pre-Caesar Roman Republic) might appeal to the New York Times readership. That's what the list could be for at its best: a mechanism for breaking out of your niche. I have no idea how many extra books it sold, but it was a meaningful mechanism for trying.
- moron4hire 6y agoDoes that mean that the list is useful because it's gameable?