What makes a book a bestseller?

Whoever has the answer to that is or will very soon be very rich.

Who knows? It's a magic formula of plot, appeal to the masses, good buzz, critical aclaim, word of mouth..... probably something else too.

Different lists use different kinds of samples to determine which books are selling really well. A good analogy would be like the stock market - someone could measure the total change in all traded stocks as one indicator, or they could use the Dow Jones which counts only certain stocks that are viewed as indicators of the market as a whole.

The New York Times' list, for example, has nothing directly to do with actual book sales. They produce their list by surveying a sample group of book sellers and compiling that information into a list of what's supposedly selling best.

The Book Sense bestseller list only uses retail information from non-chain bookstores, so a book could sell really well in chain stores and never appear on this list. Contrariwise, some chain stores simply don't carry many books that become nonetheless popular or have any number of other redeeming merits that produces sales elsewhere.

Amazon.com has a bestseller list that features only their own personal sales, so again this is a (comparatively) small sampling of total sales.

So (like the stock markets) exactly which list you use and which is important to you depends on exactly what kind of information you're hoping to get. Total raw sales? Internet sales? Large chain vs independant? Based on ratings and opinions? Divided into categories or lumped together? Etc, etc!

Hope that helps!

The amount of publicity it gets of course.

If its a true best seller it has appeal to most people , otherwise it is an imposter that was awarded bestseller because of the authors association with people in high places

The whole thing is based upon the volume of sales for any particular book. If one sells more than another and if it seels a certain amount, it becomes a best seller or makes it on to the NYT list.

The various lists are getting sales figures from different places.

a lot of human beings choose books by using there covers and therefore purchase them. A e book would not must be good to be a bestseller although frequently is. also the type you study received't were your admired yet some different person's admired.

The more people can relate to it, the better. Excellent PR and advertising will help too. The more people here about it, they'll get more curious and may want to take a chance.

Good reviews don't hurt either.

Appealing to the highest populated demographic.

in my opinion it is how many people read it. Not everyone buys there books. some borrow from friends or rent there books from the library