Sunday, August 14, 2016

How Best-Seller lists are "influenced" by Publishers

We read a lot of books and check the "best-seller" lists regularly. What I've learned is that publishers do things to make some books go into the top 100 and even top 10 and it doesn't mean people are buying and reading them.

I actually noticed this years ago when crazy Sarah Palin's book came out and it stayed at number one on the best seller lists for months!  Months!!!  Now, first of all, she's a nut job and I don't know anyone that thought her worth reading about (although I know there are). Secondly, many of the people who did follow her were poorly educated (look it up) and were not readers. So, how in the world did a book about her become a best-seller so long? The Publisher.

-  By the way, if you go in any "fire sale/discount store" like Ollies here in the Baltimore/Washington area, or a Big Lots, you'll find TONS of  books by these crazy right-wingers like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly books for $1.00 

  WHY? Because Publishers purposely order tens of thousands of copies and ship them to book stores to jack up the "sales orders" and get the book to a high place on the Best-Seller list.

  Why do I bring this up today? I just looked at the list and Out of the top 7 "Best Sellers" - they're all by right-wing extremists (that support Trump). 1) "Progressives are liars"2) a Hillary Clinton bashing book 3)  A Blll and Hillary Clinton bashing book 4) "How trump can beat Hillary" 7) another fictional "history" biook by Bill O'Rielly (who incidentally was exposed on several of his "history books" of making things up). SO, basically this top selling hardcover list is useless. Publishers have pre-ordered so many of these to catapult this hateful garbage into the top 10.  ***If you KNOW anyone that read any of these, I'd love to know about it.**


Here's a Blog from an Industry professional:
Confessions of a book publicist: Source: http://februarymedia.net/5-tips-hitting-bestsellers-lists/
As a book publicist, one of the very first questions I’m usually asked is, “Can you help make my book into a bestseller?” While there is no tried and true way, what I can tell you about are some of the secret tips that the big publishers use to give their books the best chance to hit those sought after lists.
     Authors and publishers are always trying to game the lists.  
Some authors pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies that guarantee bestsellers by buying thousands of copies of your book from a variety of outlets, both in stores and online. Some authors hire call centers and have them place orders for them. There are many ways to game the system but, thankfully, that type of trickery is rare.

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I'm a simple guy who enjoys the simple things in life, especially our dogs. I volunteer for dog rescues, enjoy exercising, blogging, politics, helping friends and neighbors, participating in ghost investigations, coffee, weather, superheroes, comic books, mystery novels, traveling, 70s and 80s music, classic country music,writing books on ghosts and spirits, cooking simply and keeping in shape. You'll find tidbits of all of these things on this blog and more. EMAIL me at Rgutro@gmail.com - Rob

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