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Hey Reader,

We need to talk about bestsellers.

Bestsellers are hyped; books are written.

Lemme say that again.

We don’t write bestsellers, we write books. Then we market the shit out of them in hopes they’ll become a bestseller.

There are courses out there that proclaim promises like “write your bestseller with us” or even “write your bestseller in a week/month/insert improbable time period” and they really grate my carrot.

Let’s start with Amazon and get that out of the way, then I’ll talk about marketing.

Amazon bestseller balls

“Amazon bestseller” is a nice badge, but it's totally meaningless because it’s extremely easy to game the system. And most “bestseller” badges on Amazon are a result of that gaming.

(If this doesn’t apply to you and your bestseller, don’t get mad, just ignore it as something that doesn’t apply to you, and keep reading.)

If you list your book on SEO in a category like “goats with boats” on Amazon, then mobilise your audience to all buy a copy on the same day, you have a bestseller on your hands, even if you only sell a handful of copies.

Big names can easily galvanise their audiences to all buy at once on the same launch day, and that’ll give a huge boost of numbers and win that badge.

Now, there are good algorithmic reasons to do this too, so I’m not just shitting on big names here — if we can get our books in the hands of lots of people early on, that tells the Amazon algorithms to push it out to more people. Which is a good thing. But the badge? Meh.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this if your values think gaming the system is fine. But you do need to know what’s what out there.

Faking it if you’re famous

Here’s something I do think is wrong though, that a lot of rich business folks do: they spend a LOT of money inflating their figures.

Salwa Emerson, a ghostwriter, talks about the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is (her words, but I agree) “shallow and repetitive. And your fourth grader can read it.”

That book sold 40 million copies worldwide because of great marketing, positioning, and timing. And MONEY.

If you have £500k+, you can buy a LOT of books to boost your sales figures. You can buy great reviews. You can pay for endorsements from famous people. And you can grab book placements online that are just not an option for the rest of us.

Bestsellers are hyped, not written

You write your book, then you hype it.

If you want to see an example of this in action, check out Laura Belgray’s brilliant and hilarious memoir Tough Titties. She wrote a great book, got it published by Hachette Books (which is super cool), and if that’s all she’d done, it would not have become a genuine bestseller.

Because publishing companies do very little to help authors market their books these days, with exceptions (which I’ll come to in a moment).

Laura hyped the absolute shit out of her book, consistently and for a long time. She did launches, events, emails, tours, and she never ever stopped talking about it. She hyped it to her email list for months before and after.

She put the work in.

This is the case with almost every bestseller that genuinely becomes a bestseller.

The author writes it — then the really hard work starts, and they market it.

I really want you to understand this because so many people write a book, sit back, and wait for it to fly off the shelves, then are shocked and saddened when that doesn’t happen.

“I can’t even get my family and friends to buy a copy!!!” they lament.

(Side note: that’s because by and large family and friends are the WORST when it comes to this type of support. I said what I said, and I stand by it. They suck. Have low expectations of them and you might be surprised. And, to be fair to them, if we’re writing a business book or specialist subject book, they may have absolutely no interest in it so why would they buy it?)

If we want people to buy our books and if we want to build momentum, we have to get off our backsides and do the work, which is FAR more than sending a few emails and making a few social media posts. Soz.

But it also is reassuring to learn that it’s often nothing to do with the quality of the book. There are some absolute SHOCKERS (see above) which have sold far more copies than they deserve, and some wonderful books that have hardly sold any copies.

Go out and market your book with the confidence of a mediocre bro hustler and you’ll do at least fine, if not well.

The celebrity authors

The final thing I want to say about bestsellers is this: if we’re not celebrities already, we’ll struggle to shift thousands of books.

I have a couple of examples.

David Walliams and Ricky Gervais and their children’s books. Walliams and Gervais are very famous men. I can imagine they mentioned wanting to write kids’ books and their publishers bit their hands off, threw money at them, and pulled out all the stops marketing them because they KNEW they have a massive built-in audience and platforms that would make the publishing company a LOT of money in book sales and also merch and other stuff.

I’m sure the books are fine, they’re both writers. But I’m equally sure there are many kids’ books of equal or higher quality that will never sell anything like their numbers because the authors are unknown.

Bob Mortimer, who I love, wrote Hotel Avocado which again is a lovely little mystery book and I enjoyed it. It sold very well, for the same reasons I just gave above. I’m not saying it didn’t deserve to… but I’ve read books that were (in my opinion) far better and have sold far fewer copies. There will be AMAZING books I never see because they don’t get hyped this way.

If you are already a big name in your industry, you’ll do better with book sales, and people will work harder on your behalf. If you have money, you have even more options.

It’s the way it is, and it’s neither right nor wrong. But we have to understand the landscape while we’re setting our expectations of what we want our books to do for us.

Books are magic and they’re not

My primary aim has never been bestseller status (I’d have been very disappointed if it was). It’s always been to get my books into the hands of the kinds of people who’d make brilliant clients for me.

Books can open doors that otherwise would remain closed, and create relationships that maybe you’d never otherwise have.

They’re wonderful. They’re magical, because they’re time travel and mind control and escapism and learning and all the good things.

But they’re also NOT magic.

Write it — and it’s there and you can be proud.

Hype it — and it’ll sell.

If you understand all this and you still want to write a book, YAY! Because your book deserves to be written.

Start here, with my book.

Then if you need more help, drop me an email and we’ll talk about my coaching programs.

TTFN,

Vicky