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Thursday, January 31, 2008


Plan To Make A Bestselling Book

There are endless discussions inside publishing houses as well as among would-be authors about what it takes to create a bestselling book. I've written about it a number of times in these entries on The Writing Life such as here and here and here. I have written about it other times and if you want to see those entries, please use the search tool in the right-hand column of the blog.

There is no single path to achieving a bestseller book. The marketplace isn't totally predictable and if it were, every single publisher would be making bestsellers (which is not happening). Yesterday I wrote about THE PUBLISHING GAME: PUBLISH A BOOK IN 30 DAYS. Reiss has another excellent book which is focused on how to make your book into a bestseller.

Fern Reiss has made it her personal mission to become a publishing expert. She shows off this expertise in THE PUBLISHING GAME, BESTSELLER IN 30 DAYS. Much of the information and resources and advice in this book is unique and ONLY in these pages. For the author who wants to sell books (and I would hope that is every author), it's like gold to learn the topics that Reiss includes in this book. For example, she writes, "in the next 30 days, you'll learn how to get your book into bookstores, corporations, book clubs, catalogs, and the hands of the public."

Whether your book is self-published or a traditional publisher has released your book, as the author, you need to be involved in the selling process. As Reiss explains in this book--you need a plan. Get this book and begin to plan your steps to becoming a bestselling author.

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2 Comment:

At 5:51 PM, Blogger Kristi Holl Left a note...

Terry, how does the author define bestselling? Specific figures? And does she give specific titles or authors who have used this advice and their books become bestsellers in 30 days? Just curious!

 
At 6:21 PM, Blogger Terry Whalin Left a note...

Kristi,

You raise a great point. Reiss answers on page 16 saying, "Bestselling means different things to different people. Some books sell only a few thousand copies and make the bestseller lists, while others sell many more but never make the lists. To further complicate the situation, there are now several different lists purporting to be the bestseller list, and all are different. I can't guarantee that your book will appear on one of these lists--or that you'll sell hundreds of thousands of copies. But if you're an author whose efforts result in wildly successful book sales, you guarantee that your next, book will command much more money..."

It goes on but she's basically pointing authors to make the bestseller list to reach that "bestseller" title.

I hope that helps,

Terry

 

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