Quote: (02-24-2015 12:30 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:
He's an excellent writer of proven worldwide mass popularity, with I think at least two NYT bestsellers. Another level of accomplishment.
Becoming a NYT best-selling author is like being a fucking NFL quarterback or astronaut. I feel there is usually VERY much to learn about execution from someone who achieves this level of success at ANYTHING.
I realize this is a fairly old comment but it must come from such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the NYT bestseller list (and similar lists) works that I have to address it.
Being on the list doesn't mean you're ultra successful, and not being on the list is not at all indicative of failure. The key points are that the list is curated, and the list is based on sales velocity, with no consideration at all of total sales.
1. Curation. If they don't like what you wrote (genre, content), how you published it (traditional vs indie), etc, they'll simply leave it off the list. Independent authors with extremely high sales velocity have been left off the list plenty of times. There's a fair degree of snobbishness involved.
2. Sales velocity is the metric used to determine which of the "approved" books get on the list. Sales velocity is how many sales you make in a certain period of time, usually a week. It doesn't take into account total sales at all. So to use an extreme example, you could sell 20,000 copies in the launch week and never sell another copy of the book, but make it onto the list. If you sold 1000 copies a week for five years you would never make it onto the list, despite selling 13x more books than the 20k copy flameout.
Because it's based on sales velocity, there are ways to manipulate the list once you're established. You can arrange preorders or get legions of fans to buy all at once (nothing wrong with that), and authors have even been known to buy thousands of copies of their own books in launch week to get on bestseller lists (lame). And for various reasons--more lists, more available titles--the actual sales velocity you need to achieve to make the NYT list is a smallish fraction of what it was 20 years ago.
Bestseller lists are a mediocre-to-poor indicator of writing career success and certainly a poor indicator of the quality of the books in question. I would never buy a book just because it was on a bestseller list, and I would never assume a writer knows what he's doing (let alone is some kind of expert) just because he made a list once. Being a bestselling author means about as much as having won literary awards these days, in my opinion. It's just something to brag about over drinks, and use in advertising from time to time.
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I don't have much to say about Neil Strauss. I enjoyed his
Emergency book, even though big chunks of it were obsolescent by the time it was published. I haven't read anything else he wrote, but he seemed an entertaining writer. However, seeing how this book is $18 and I see
The Game is $28, both for the ebook versions, there's no fucking way I'm going to buy either one. Maybe I'll get used copies someday if they're a decent price.