What makes bestsellers?

The best books don't necessarily become bestsellers. That's easy enough to understand. Most of us most of the time don't look for great books when we go to a bookstore. We look for good books, books that will entertain us in the case of fiction or inform us in the case of nonfiction. Sometimes great books also happen to be good books, which is why Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird continue to sell many copies each year. And sometimes great books do work their way to the top of bestseller lists, as in the case of The Goldfinch a couple of years back.

But how do certain books become bestsellers when other, often better, books do not? We rarely buy books we have already read, unless as a replacement copy or as a gift. So we don't know ahead of time that we will like a book, or that we will even read it past the first few pages. So why are some books purchased more often than others? Here are some reasons that come to mind.

Publicity

Advertising sells books just like it sells anything else. A frequent complaint of authors is that their publishers spent little or nothing on publicity. Relatively few books manage to get ads in The New York Times Book Review or other publications, but those that do can benefit from them. Yesterday USA Today ran a quarter-page ad promoting a live video chat with Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush promoting their book Sisters First. Both the ad and the chat should help sell a few copies of the book, and in the book world, it really doesn't take that many copies to make a bestseller.

Promotion by the authors themselves

Ann Patchett signs one of her books.

In lieu of paid advertising, most publishers expect their authors to sell their own books. This is done by book signings at book stores, appearances at book fairs, talks to literary groups and video chats like the one mentioned above, among other things. Some authors are better at this than others. I've attended two speeches by novelist Ann Patchett, plus a panel discussion in which she was one of the panelists. She seems to do a lot of this, and I'm sure it sells a lot of books because of her big smile and warm personality. Not all writers are as effective in public, however, and they may sell fewer books as a result.

Track record

This reason may be most important. There are bestselling books, but there are also bestselling authors. These are those whose books repeatedly climb the bestseller lists. If you liked one book, you are likely to want to read other books by the same author. Thus, virtually anything written by Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, David Baldacci and others are all but certain to become bestsellers. They may even become bestsellers before they are even published on the basis of preorders.

Reviews

Good reviews can sell a few copies, and bad reviews may discourage some sales, but I doubt that book reviews are really that important in creating bestsellers, for the simple reason that few reviews are read by large numbers of people. What reviews can do, however, even if they are not actually read, is inform the public that certain books by certain authors have been published. If it's an author we like (see "Track record" above) that alone may send us running to the bookstore.

Covers

When authors don't have much of a track record on bestseller lists, a good cover illustration, a good title and some good blurbs from prominent individuals can help get them on those lists. I judge books by their covers all the time, and I'm sure others do, too.

Popularity

Most of us, some more than others, like to be in with the in-crowd, which is why fashions change and we change with fashions. Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature writes about an experiment done via a website in which subjects could download songs. When they could see which songs others had downloaded, people tended to download those same songs. If different songs were shown to be most popular, then those songs were most likely to be the ones downloaded.

So it goes with books. People buy books others are buying, which explains why once a book makes it to the bestseller list, it tends to stay there. Success begets more success. But sometimes even the perception that a book will become a bestseller, such as perhaps that book by the Bush sisters, may help it become a bestseller. Even better than being part of the crowd is being ahead of the crowd.