6 ms·

How To Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List

117 points by 1337biz 14y ago

shill 14y ago
Only suckers fall for PR trickery. Now I'm going to check out this Tony Hsieh book and website. Seems interesting.
aheilbut 14y ago
What's amazing is how few copies it takes to get onto the list.
davidw 14y ago
It'd be very interesting to get the scoop on what books are promoted this way. I find a lot of business books to be very much on the "fluffy" side of things. Even good ones that present a unique idea often take a long time to say something that could have easily been state in 10 pages or less.
- nikcub 14y ago
  I usually avoid first-time authors who don't already contribute articles to an outlet (HBR, Economist) or don't have a blog and are releasing a book as their first stop in publishing. It usually means they are more interested in selling a book and become famous rather than sharing information, leading to poorer quality work. I have found that this has held true with reasonable accuracy.
kunaalarya 14y ago
It's crazy how similar this is for App of the Day's for apps to get to the top of the app store.
diziet 14y ago
I recently had a discussion with a friend about a similar situation -- incentivized downloads in the App Store to reach high rankings. There is a continuum of advertising tactics, from directly buying downloads, to buying placement inside apps that give some benefit for installing an app, to advertising an app in as many places as possible where a lot of users would see it. They all start with the same input (money) and end up with the same result (more apps installed, higher chart position), just they go about it via different means. Where should the line be drawn?
- demione 14y ago
  Getting a potential customer to download an app is the single largest hurdle placed at the beginning of the monetization funnel. You could make the argument that since a lot of the incentivized apps are free, it isn't really a laundering operation. The incentivized app only starts bringing in revenue once it convinces a user to start making in-app purchases.
stephp 14y ago
Ugh. I've heard the bestsellers list is nothing but jumping through hoops and hacking loopholes anymore. Danielle Laporte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions, sold more than many of the "bestsellers" at the time, but because the majority were sold online, she lost out on the ability to call it what it was. It's gross.
wereHamster 14y ago
With all the digital tools we use to read books (Kindle et al), wouldn't it be possible to track people who have actually read the book? People who have looked and spent at least a minute looking at >90% of the pages in the book? Throw in a bit cryptography and account tracking and it should be much more accurate than just tracking purchases.
- hayksaakian 14y ago
  Its the same issue as neilson scores for TV. Statistically questionable, but highly respected. Any competitor has less appeal.
- ebf 14y ago
  I know publishing through Amazon, authors have access to that type of data.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  And that's why I would never buy a ebook reader that phones home. This is creepy. It is no one's business but mine what I read and when and how fast.
- azov 14y ago
  This will just lead to low wage workers in some third world country being hired to flip pages on huge racks of Kindles. The thing is - popularity is a stupid metrics to use for picking reading material (or almost anything else). There's a small number of people I respect enough to read anything they recommend, but I'm not going to read something just because lots of random people choose to read it.
  - Jabbles 14y ago
    I'd like to see someone buy their way onto http://www.thegatesnotes.com/books http://www.thegatesnotes.com/books Although I don't always agree with Bill on whether a book is worth reading or not, it's a reasonable indicator that I'll find it interesting and intellectually stimulating.
joshkaufman 14y ago
The only thing current bestseller lists measure is unit sales volume over a one week period. That's it. I'm a full-time non-fiction author, and I work with a large publisher. "Bestsellers," particularly NYT bestsellers, get huge amounts of display placement in retail distribution. If you make the list, you get additional in-store display and sell many more copies, so most publishers want you to do everything you can to make it happen. If the author is (or wants to be) a speaker, hitting the list is even more appealing: it's a permanent high-value social signal that will increase demand for speaking engagements, as well as support a sizable fee increase. Each weekly bestseller list has a fixed number of slots, and many authors are able and willing to buy their way onto the list. The lists don't want to be gamed, so they've developed countermeasures (like tracking national sales distribution), which really only creates demand for order laundering services like ResultSource. The number of authors willing to game the list makes it much harder to hit the list if you're not willing to use the same tactics. Anti-gaming measures increase the demand for laundering services. If you run a big conference or company, want to give attendees/clients/employees a copy of the book, and you want to make sure your book orders count for the list, guess what: you need to hire a laundering service. If you don't, you probably won't hit the list. If you do, you probably will. (This isn't hypothetical: I've seen it happen many times, both for books that have hit the list, and those that haven't.) The worst part about the whole game is that, if you intend to hit the list, it affects every decision you make about the book: topic, positioning, title, cover, and content. I think many non-fiction authors, in their efforts to make the list, end up making their books less useful. That's why this topic hits home for me: I've made a conscious decision not to pursue the lists. Instead, I'm going to focus all of my attention on creating useful, valuable books that are interesting to read, then make sure the right readers know they exist. If one of my books hits the list eventually, that'll be nice, but it's not the point. I know why I'm doing what I'm doing, but damn, the siren song of the NYT list is still strong. Every few weeks, I have to remind myself that bending over backwards to maximize sales over a one week period isn't the point. It's working so far: my first book is more popular today than it was when it came out 2+ years ago. My second book comes out in June, and readers are already excited. I'm happy, satisfied with my career, and looking forward to continuing to write books. Success as an author has absolutely nothing to do with bestseller lists.
- 14y ago
jhonovich 14y ago
Doesn't Tim Ferris use a similar tactic for his books? Buy 100 copies get X, Y and Z from him...
- suyash 14y ago
  Yup he does and he also games Amazon.
salemh 14y ago
From 2007, Tim Ferris breaks down his own campaign to reach the NY Times Best Seller list: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/08/06/how-does-a-bestseller-happen-a-case-study-in-hitting-1-on-the-new-york-times/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/08/06/how-does-a-b... He is extremely good at self-promotion, and the critics he has over the internet (well founded or not), can still dissect/use some good bits he puts out.
- MDS100 14y ago
  For the good bits, there are better sources. Nearly everything contains some good bits. The problem lies in intentional deceit. Tim is a smart guy and had access to very accomplished, smart people. Very unlikely that he can't think critically about some of the nonsense he puts out. For example he gets very basic physiological mechanisms astonishingly wrong and can't reach his own fitness or language goals with his own advice.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
GHFigs 14y ago
Be sure to check out the companion article: "How To Get Forbes and The Wall Street Journal to Advertise Your Book Marketing Consultancy" http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- mindcrime 14y ago
  For a book length treatment of some modern "sneaky" PR stuff, check out Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.[1] If you currently trust the media, read this book and see how you feel afterwards. Then go listen to some Queensryche: I used to trust the media To tell me the truth, tell us the truth But now I've seen the payoffs Everywhere I look Who do you trust when everyone's a crook? [1]: http://trustmeimlying.com/ http://trustmeimlying.com/
mathattack 14y ago
Intuitively I knew that scam existed. I appreciate getting the number. It's hard to monetize 210K, but for a vanity project by a CEO, why not?
- danielharan 14y ago
  Not just vanity; you might recoup the investment from speaking fees alone.
rokhayakebe 14y ago
Black hat SEO for the real world.
coditor 14y ago
It's no different in the iphone/android app businesses. There are many companies that promise to push you up to #1. We tested one and it worked for 3 days, but it's useless for most apps. They pay or give freebies to people in Asian or African countries to download your app and try it once. For $10,000 it worked like a charm, we went from 100th+ to 1st in the category in one day. Three days later we started dropping and in a few more it was back to the usual. It's a really crummy way to get real customers but I know other people pay on a regular basis to stay in the top 10 just so they keep visible. We won't do that again since the customers aren't real but it was an eye-opener. There are more sophisticated companies that can create the same buzz with better customers but they all cost a lot more $. You can game anything if you are willing to spend the cash.
- babuskov 14y ago
  I never thought such services could really work. Can you give the name or URL of the one you used? I'd really like to see how they present the whole idea, and whether they believe it is a right think to do.
abat 14y ago
From the article, it sounds like this gaming the system is more common for niche areas like advice and less so with the main fiction list. Besides niches being easier to manipulate, the economics are different. An advice author is often trying to use a book as a self-promotional tool (eg Tim Ferris and Tony Hsieh) so they can afford to spend more money, but a literary writer is actually trying to make money from selling books. That's not to say there's not value in paying to get to the top of fiction for better visibility or that it also doesn't happen.
suyash 14y ago
Same can be said for gaming Amazon Top Seller ratings, I believe there was a post couple of days about about how to game Amazon, can someone attach the link?

117 points by 1337biz 14y ago

shill 14y ago

Only suckers fall for PR trickery. Now I'm going to check out this Tony Hsieh book and website. Seems interesting.

aheilbut 14y ago

What's amazing is how few copies it takes to get onto the list.

davidw 14y ago

It'd be very interesting to get the scoop on what books are promoted this way. I find a lot of business books to be very much on the "fluffy" side of things. Even good ones that present a unique idea often take a long time to say something that could have easily been state in 10 pages or less.

nikcub 14y ago
I usually avoid first-time authors who don't already contribute articles to an outlet (HBR, Economist) or don't have a blog and are releasing a book as their first stop in publishing. It usually means they are more interested in selling a book and become famous rather than sharing information, leading to poorer quality work. I have found that this has held true with reasonable accuracy.

kunaalarya 14y ago

It's crazy how similar this is for App of the Day's for apps to get to the top of the app store.

diziet 14y ago

I recently had a discussion with a friend about a similar situation -- incentivized downloads in the App Store to reach high rankings. There is a continuum of advertising tactics, from directly buying downloads, to buying placement inside apps that give some benefit for installing an app, to advertising an app in as many places as possible where a lot of users would see it. They all start with the same input (money) and end up with the same result (more apps installed, higher chart position), just they go about it via different means. Where should the line be drawn?

demione 14y ago
Getting a potential customer to download an app is the single largest hurdle placed at the beginning of the monetization funnel. You could make the argument that since a lot of the incentivized apps are free, it isn't really a laundering operation. The incentivized app only starts bringing in revenue once it convinces a user to start making in-app purchases.

stephp 14y ago

Ugh. I've heard the bestsellers list is nothing but jumping through hoops and hacking loopholes anymore. Danielle Laporte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions, sold more than many of the "bestsellers" at the time, but because the majority were sold online, she lost out on the ability to call it what it was. It's gross.

wereHamster 14y ago

With all the digital tools we use to read books (Kindle et al), wouldn't it be possible to track people who have actually read the book? People who have looked and spent at least a minute looking at >90% of the pages in the book? Throw in a bit cryptography and account tracking and it should be much more accurate than just tracking purchases.

hayksaakian 14y ago
Its the same issue as neilson scores for TV. Statistically questionable, but highly respected. Any competitor has less appeal.
ebf 14y ago
I know publishing through Amazon, authors have access to that type of data.
aw3c2 14y ago
And that's why I would never buy a ebook reader that phones home. This is creepy. It is no one's business but mine what I read and when and how fast.
azov 14y ago
This will just lead to low wage workers in some third world country being hired to flip pages on huge racks of Kindles. The thing is - popularity is a stupid metrics to use for picking reading material (or almost anything else). There's a small number of people I respect enough to read anything they recommend, but I'm not going to read something just because lots of random people choose to read it.
- Jabbles 14y ago
  I'd like to see someone buy their way onto http://www.thegatesnotes.com/books http://www.thegatesnotes.com/books Although I don't always agree with Bill on whether a book is worth reading or not, it's a reasonable indicator that I'll find it interesting and intellectually stimulating.

joshkaufman 14y ago

The only thing current bestseller lists measure is unit sales volume over a one week period. That's it. I'm a full-time non-fiction author, and I work with a large publisher. "Bestsellers," particularly NYT bestsellers, get huge amounts of display placement in retail distribution. If you make the list, you get additional in-store display and sell many more copies, so most publishers want you to do everything you can to make it happen. If the author is (or wants to be) a speaker, hitting the list is even more appealing: it's a permanent high-value social signal that will increase demand for speaking engagements, as well as support a sizable fee increase. Each weekly bestseller list has a fixed number of slots, and many authors are able and willing to buy their way onto the list. The lists don't want to be gamed, so they've developed countermeasures (like tracking national sales distribution), which really only creates demand for order laundering services like ResultSource. The number of authors willing to game the list makes it much harder to hit the list if you're not willing to use the same tactics. Anti-gaming measures increase the demand for laundering services. If you run a big conference or company, want to give attendees/clients/employees a copy of the book, and you want to make sure your book orders count for the list, guess what: you need to hire a laundering service. If you don't, you probably won't hit the list. If you do, you probably will. (This isn't hypothetical: I've seen it happen many times, both for books that have hit the list, and those that haven't.) The worst part about the whole game is that, if you intend to hit the list, it affects every decision you make about the book: topic, positioning, title, cover, and content. I think many non-fiction authors, in their efforts to make the list, end up making their books less useful. That's why this topic hits home for me: I've made a conscious decision not to pursue the lists. Instead, I'm going to focus all of my attention on creating useful, valuable books that are interesting to read, then make sure the right readers know they exist. If one of my books hits the list eventually, that'll be nice, but it's not the point. I know why I'm doing what I'm doing, but damn, the siren song of the NYT list is still strong. Every few weeks, I have to remind myself that bending over backwards to maximize sales over a one week period isn't the point. It's working so far: my first book is more popular today than it was when it came out 2+ years ago. My second book comes out in June, and readers are already excited. I'm happy, satisfied with my career, and looking forward to continuing to write books. Success as an author has absolutely nothing to do with bestseller lists.

14y ago

jhonovich 14y ago

Doesn't Tim Ferris use a similar tactic for his books? Buy 100 copies get X, Y and Z from him...

suyash 14y ago
Yup he does and he also games Amazon.

salemh 14y ago

From 2007, Tim Ferris breaks down his own campaign to reach the NY Times Best Seller list: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/08/06/how-does-a-bestseller-happen-a-case-study-in-hitting-1-on-the-new-york-times/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/08/06/how-does-a-b... He is extremely good at self-promotion, and the critics he has over the internet (well founded or not), can still dissect/use some good bits he puts out.

MDS100 14y ago
For the good bits, there are better sources. Nearly everything contains some good bits. The problem lies in intentional deceit. Tim is a smart guy and had access to very accomplished, smart people. Very unlikely that he can't think critically about some of the nonsense he puts out. For example he gets very basic physiological mechanisms astonishingly wrong and can't reach his own fitness or language goals with his own advice.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

GHFigs 14y ago

Be sure to check out the companion article: "How To Get Forbes and The Wall Street Journal to Advertise Your Book Marketing Consultancy" http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

mindcrime 14y ago
For a book length treatment of some modern "sneaky" PR stuff, check out Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.[1] If you currently trust the media, read this book and see how you feel afterwards. Then go listen to some Queensryche: I used to trust the media To tell me the truth, tell us the truth But now I've seen the payoffs Everywhere I look Who do you trust when everyone's a crook? [1]: http://trustmeimlying.com/ http://trustmeimlying.com/

mathattack 14y ago

Intuitively I knew that scam existed. I appreciate getting the number. It's hard to monetize 210K, but for a vanity project by a CEO, why not?

danielharan 14y ago
Not just vanity; you might recoup the investment from speaking fees alone.

rokhayakebe 14y ago

Black hat SEO for the real world.

coditor 14y ago

It's no different in the iphone/android app businesses. There are many companies that promise to push you up to #1. We tested one and it worked for 3 days, but it's useless for most apps. They pay or give freebies to people in Asian or African countries to download your app and try it once. For $10,000 it worked like a charm, we went from 100th+ to 1st in the category in one day. Three days later we started dropping and in a few more it was back to the usual. It's a really crummy way to get real customers but I know other people pay on a regular basis to stay in the top 10 just so they keep visible. We won't do that again since the customers aren't real but it was an eye-opener. There are more sophisticated companies that can create the same buzz with better customers but they all cost a lot more $. You can game anything if you are willing to spend the cash.

babuskov 14y ago
I never thought such services could really work. Can you give the name or URL of the one you used? I'd really like to see how they present the whole idea, and whether they believe it is a right think to do.

abat 14y ago

From the article, it sounds like this gaming the system is more common for niche areas like advice and less so with the main fiction list. Besides niches being easier to manipulate, the economics are different. An advice author is often trying to use a book as a self-promotional tool (eg Tim Ferris and Tony Hsieh) so they can afford to spend more money, but a literary writer is actually trying to make money from selling books. That's not to say there's not value in paying to get to the top of fiction for better visibility or that it also doesn't happen.

suyash 14y ago

Same can be said for gaming Amazon Top Seller ratings, I believe there was a post couple of days about about how to game Amazon, can someone attach the link?