How to make a BOOK into a bestseller

“The Times' argument suggested that Blatty had just kind of fundamentally misunderstood what the New York Times bestseller list actually was. It wasn't just a reflection of raw sales. It was a journalistic process. The Times was essentially reporting out different sources of sales data and using a secret formula to parse that data and come up with their definitive assessment of which books had, in fact, sold the best.”

“And instead of taking your usual, you know, $20,000 speaking fee, you instead ask the company to buy a certain number of your books. One of these authors told me, sometimes a company will ask, like, you're asking us to buy way more books than we have employees. What are we gonna do with an extra thousand copies of your book? And the author told me they'd essentially say, I don't care if you burn the books. As long as those sales are logged, that is kinda your problem. Of course, a huge key to this whole scheme is that the authors have to be very careful not to tip-off the mysterious data crunchers at the New York Times bestseller department. So what they'll do is hire a specialized firm to essentially launder their bulk book purchases. One of these shadowy companies will then go to the trouble of identifying the bookstores that likely report to the New York Times, and they'll use the author's money to buy the books in small enough batches to not trigger any bulk sales alarms.”

“So he decides to do a national live tour where a big chunk of the tickets at each venue will actually include a book purchase, because those tickets, if purchased before the launch, would count as preorders. That could potentially mean thousands of copies that would go towards that crucial first week of sales. It would turn the tour into a bookselling machine. With that, everyone at Planet Money springs into motion, coming up with live stories to tell on stage. But as the weeks and then months start to tick by, ticket sales are going kinda slow, especially in some cities.”

“And there is this powerful lesson baked into the whole iLibertine affair. In the solar system of book publishing, bestseller lists, then and now, have their own kind of gravitational force, almost like a black hole. The fact that Shep was able to stir up such a frenzy by insinuating all this demand kinda underlines the self fulfilling power of getting onto a bestseller list because popularity begets popularity.”

“Getting to profitability on any given book, even a bestseller, could involve multiple print runs of the hardcover version and then the paperback edition after that. And in the case of the Planet Money book, it's also going to roll out in the academic market as part of Courseware in Classrooms. As for the million or so dollar advance that Norton paid to NPR, that money was to be doled out in four installments. Each time, the book agents got their commission, usually around 15%. And so far, NPR has gotten three installments.”