Truth, lies and statistics
I was referred to Chip Macgregor’s blog (Chip is an agent and sometime publisher) for statistics on the most successful books of 2007. It turns out only 4 books sold over a million copies this year, and 15 more sold between 50 000 and one million. Total of 19 books out of the 250 000 new books printed last year.
Contrast this with the number of times you hear about Best Sellers. Actually, you hear more about “Best Selling Writers”. I’m sure Oprah interviewed more than 19 of them last year. I believe the term “Best Seller” refers to most copies sold in a specific time period. The Best Seller lists are renewed several times a year. How successful those Best Sellers are over the long haul, or the course of an entire year, is uncertain.
Which leads of course to the philosophical question, “What is success?”. The most contented people I know seem to have their own definition of success, and focus their efforts on attaining or even maintaining the life that is most satisfying to them. It takes a fair bit of deliberation to come up with such a definition, but well worth the effort when faced with the world’s clamourings about what it considers success.
Then there are those who never achieve “success” because as soon as one thing is achieved, there’s a higher mountain to climb in the never ending accumulation of status symbols, by which they measure their own success and others.
I’m sure others fall in the middle somewhere. My definition changed recently, and I’m doing my best to find a new one to stick to.
F. Paul Wilson has a brief primer on how Bestsellers works. “Bestsellerdom isn’t determined by total sales. It’s determined by velocity of sales during a given week.” Check out Bestsellers 101 at RepairmanJack.com
February 27th, 2008 at 3:26 pmHey I know Chip MacGregor. Free lance writer has been involved with Harvest house publishers etc.
uncle walter
March 15th, 2008 at 9:51 amCool to have someone in the family who’s got ties to the business…
Good to hear from you, Uncle Walter!
March 30th, 2008 at 7:04 pm