Author:
Many years ago, yes we were publishers then, the NYT listed a book title as a NYT Best Seller. It hadn't even been written yet. I believe everyone in the publishing business knew the NYT was a Wine and Dine list. Those publishers who could wine and dine the owner, editors, and writers of the NYT were assured of selling hundreds of thousands more books if they made the list. It was a very exclusive club bought and paid for with lots of free food, women, lavish trips, and exotic holidays. Don't forget to toss in an expense account to assure one's latest or not even published book made that list.
And if anyone asks, this is all a fictional account in my mind. I can't afford to fight their humongus legal staff. Thus I'm lying my unhuh off and I'm dreaming up this story because I'm senile.
Not until the net and on demand publishing became a force in the world of book publishing did any writer or publisher dare believe their efforts would spawn into the best selling number one book even if the NYT didn't anoint it. I'm proud to claim I believe the publishing company I worked for was the spark that caused all that. I wrote the program to format any story into a book designed to print the way we began. Our books were printed on standard sheets of typing paper, compressed, spine was hot glued, cover added, and the books went out one or a dozen at a time. We carried our books to all the trade shows, all the book fairs and everyone we met kept telling us we couldn't do it that way. A lot of someones was taking notes and paying attention. Multi million dollar companies came and invested in equipment to make On Demand Books the same way we did it. But, theirs was automated and ours labor intensive. We lost the race to the top and a place in the outlets for those one up or a hundred at a time prints.
For all you authors who wish to have your stories on your coffee table, or on the book shelf, maybe as a gift of pride to those you love. The On Demand Publishing is going strong and you can order one or more with your name and story title on the cover and your story inside. You might not make the NYT Best Seller List but I bet it worms its way into your own Best Seller List even if it's only one published book. Trust me on this, looking at a story on an electronic screen is no where as thrilling as holding it in one's hand and flipping through the pages of ink and paper reading one's own story. Steven King and all the rest, eat your heart out. You aren't the only author who made it into the paper and ink book world. If you really want to become a home celebrity, gift a copy of your efforts to the local library. I have yet to hear of any library who failed to support a local home grown author.
NYT Best Seller List? Hah, it has always been and always will be a joke.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/29716/prager-new-york-times-b...
I've read better authors here on BCTS than many of those so called authors selling thousands of books.
Life is a gift, treasure it until it's gone
always,
Barb
Comments
I have personally never
I have personally never found any book on the NYT best seller list to be worth reading. _NONE_ At this point, I see it as being a 'Don't bother with these books, because they're crap' list.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
There's not
A shadow of a doubt that the NYT list was at least partly, if not totally a product of major publishing house' publicity efforts.
I can't help but notice that
I can't help but notice that the source you linked to, the Daily Wire, is hardly a credible source itself.
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Would the actual words of the
Would the actual words of the Times itself suffice?
See for yourself. They admit to things being under the control of the editors and aren't based solely on sales figures and the sources of the figures aren't from retailers themselves.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
Prager's rant
If Dennis Prager and his publisher don't think the NY Times list is meaningful, why bother with the rant?
Publishing is a strange business since many of the real bestsellers are bibles and cookbooks.
Don't forget 'coffee table' books
you must not forget that genre. These are books that people think it 'cool' to be seen to own but never read.
For most people, 'A Brief History of Time' was one of those. At one time it was estimated that 90% of Hardback owners had never read past the first page.
Samantha
I have a number of true
I have a number of true coffee table books and I really like them. The original coffee table books were the books such as all the Comics from the New Yorker. It's 18" tall and very wide. It requires a full coffee table to read them.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
I have
A gardening encyclopedia (somewhere) that I occasionally use. When I was a youngster my grandparents had a book of world art that was probably close to 20" square and four or five inches thick. The only thicker book in the house was the unabridged dictionary! Which is another (or was) best seller!
Jean Shepherd's take on the best seller list?
I do not know of the accuracy of the Wikipedia article, but this is funny:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Libertine
This is a Shepherd broadcast (first part) describing the hoax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tCfVhsTj-E
An actual book by Theodore Sturgeon was written and published to complete the scam.
Publicity
which is what the NYT list amounts to is the lifeblood of making money at an enterprise such as publishing. If no one knows about your book, then no one will buy your book. Sure places like Amazon have helped break that stranglehold but there is still the issue of initially getting it in front of enough eyes to make it pay its way. Part of the reason I am mentioning this is that for us, we may face almost double the uphill battle on this issue. We are not entirely mainstream and we are trying to break past barriers that intentional or not keep us from entering mainstream thought. I've read a lot of Morpheus stuff, and he is an author I will read everything new he puts out.
I just read the Wildcats freebee and found the writing to be engaging and very well done from a technical perspective. As a dyslexic this is important to me! That is that the writing have as few technical issues as possible. Of course an operator's manual for a piece of equipment may be well written from a technical point of view and only engage the interest of the operator of that equipment!
I'm not sure of all the issues that go into developing a revenue stream, but one that I'm sure of is that if no one knows your product is available it really doesn't matter how good it is! In other words while a better mousetrap ought to market itself, if it never is seen outside of your workshop no one will ever have a chance to find out if it works better and tell people about it!
And that sort of leads back to the Hatbox here, or what can we do to make sure that Erin and the crew get a more steady and larger revenue stream?
First: Tell your friends. Word of mouth helps market more products than most people think about.
Second: if you have a platform, no matter how small, tell it from there.
Third: Contribute, if not in direct money, then in kind, I E labor, your expertise at any issue that might affect the overall performance of the site like programing (so we don't get the dreaded purple screen back) proofreading (I'm again putting out that as long as I can maintain internet access I will commit to 50,000 words a month for the hatbox of proofreading) editing, artwork, or any other thing that will help the look and feel of the site.
Frankly I think Morpheus easily matches or beats many bestsellin
authors. I have asked him if his name is a pseudonym and he has told me no. As far as I'm concerned, Morpheus should be a millionaire and many others but for the subject matter makes people uncomfortable.
I agree
There are few mainstream published authors with best sellers to their name who I consider better, and some of those are dead! I mean really for telling a good story Morpheus is at least as good as say Anne McCaffery. He lacks a dedicated proofreader evidently, but for something that is done without compensation? Absolutely would make it into my favorite authors list. I could link a list of my favorite web erotica but I won't. Just suffice it to say that as a million word a year reader I'm glad there are people like Morpheus, Elrod and quite a few others out there who I can read for free. Oh and of course the Gutenberg project... :-)
Oh my,
where are the good old days, when you could go into a print shop with an offset machine and have them print off 20 books from your Pagemaker 4 file directly in their machine and also bind them into your home designed cover? My then partner published her book that way in 1996 and whenever we travelled to the continent we left some copies in fringe book shops.
Who cares about best seller lists?
Monique S