Best-seller

A best-seller is a delivers known as to success because of the appearance of its title in certain lists. In the everyday life, the term “best-seller” is not an indication of the number of sold copies, academic quality or literary importance of the book. Therefore, to join the adjective of best-seller to a book is partly arbitrary. Moreover, certain books became best-sellers once they were labelled like tel.

The best-sellers are usually divided into two groups: Fiction and non-fiction. In the case of Romance S, an important effort Marketing is provided by the various actors of the chain of publication to create a passion around the title.

The idea of best-seller is relatively recent in the history of humanity, because it is necessary a capacity of

to produce enormous quantities of books
to distribute these books
to measure these quantities
to transmit information wanted to many people

First best-seller?

To create a best-seller according to the modern criteria, one needs certain assets: production of enormous quantities of books, distribution of these books, measures relatively effective distributed quantities and transmission of information. All these operations must be carried out at a reasonable cost. Since the invention of printing works by Gutenberg, the popular books are often copied without compensation. It was necessary to await the end of the Age of Enlightenment so that this practice becomes negligible according to the modern criteria. For this reason, it is difficult to know the number of copies of Don Quichotte (1605) written by Miguel de Cervantes, even if it is known that the work was immensely popular for a certain period. The same argument applies to the edition 1534 of the Bible of Martin Luther.

On the other hand, the Bible (all confused versions) would be the first known best-seller. When it is published, it is read through the whole world.

Besides it is as from the 20th century, with the system of the royalty , that several authors started to live of their feather, some receiving very high amounts.

Description

The best-sellers are generally classified in two main categories: Fiction and non-fiction. This categorization is specified by subcategories. For example, the NewYork Times added to its list a section for the books youth, that with an aim of decreasing the importance of the books of the saga Harry Potter which appeared regularly in position 1,2 and 3 in the list of works of fiction.

The best-sellers can also be classified according to whether they are with rigid cover ( hardcover ) or flexible ( paperback ). Chronologically, the book with rigid cover, more prestigious, leaves a few months before its counterpart to flexible cover, less expensive. The notoriety of the version with rigid cover often influences the other.

With the the United Kingdom, a book with rigid cover is estimated a best-seller when it is sold some between 4 000 and 25 000 copies per week. With the Canada, it is rather 5 000 copies. In all the cases, these numbers are relativized. For example, a book of Sociologie can be sold with 300 copies per week and be labelled best-seller, because the majority of the books in this field are sold markedly less well.

There exist several lists of best-sellers, some containing 10 titles, whereas others contain 150 of them. In North America, the NewYork Times Best Seller list is probably most known. In the the Commonwealth, the Liste of the prizes winner of the Booker price in fiction could make such an office, although published only once the year.

Literary quality

Partly because of the setting in market, a best-seller can be perceived negatively, particularly in Fiction, when he is seen like a work for the general public. In spite of that, the use of this term is regular, appearing especially on the page-covers of the books with flexible cover.

Lists

The lists of best-seller, built according to various parameters, vary much of the one with the other. The lists of Book Sense are based only on the sales carried out by the independent Librairie S, whereas those produced by The NewYork Times enter the sales with large and the detail of various sources. A book which runs out well in the shop-memories and the Supermarché S can appear on one of the lists of the NewYork Times , but not on those of Book Sense .

The lists of the site Amazon.com , the most important salesman in line of books, are based only on the sales carried out by the means of its Web site and are updated on a time basis. The sales the large one are not included. Moreover, several Web sites offer councils to the authors to increase artificially and temporarily the position of their books on this list in incentive the purchasers to get their books at one exact moment. This short appearance allows the authors, by after, to affirm that such book belonged to the 100 best salesmen of Amazon.com , even if it is in general sold little.

The format and the price of a book can influence the position of a book in the lists of Amazon.com . Indeed, they tend to support the books with rigid cover which are more expensive, but are often dispatched free. The books with flexible cover, less expensive, do usually better on the lists of the NewYork Times . Estimating that the market concerned differs, Book Sense and Publisher' S Weekly separate the books with rigid cover from the books with flexible cover.

Checking

The lists of best-sellers which seem strictly based on the sales, verifiable, from books general public, such those of Amazon.com , diverge appreciably from the lists created starting from various sources, such that of the NewYork Times ( note : this newspaper does not reveal the method employed to draw up its lists). This situation is to be put in parallel with what occurred in 1991 for the sales of albums of music. This year, the Billboard magazine passed from a method based on manually produced reports/ratios by the stores, with a method being based on the sales registered in the cash registers, which were compiled by a system named SoundScan . This passage saw a dramatic change in the position of the titles.

Today, several lists are generated automatically. The bookstores can use their system of sales outlet automatically to bring back their sales to Book Sense . The distributers, the such giant Ingram Book Group , have a system of calculations similar to Amazon.com , but the produced lists are disponibes only with the registered bookstores. The large companies of retail sale, such Barnes & Noble , compile the sales of their stores and their Web sites.

The system Nielsen BookScan is probably the most ambitious project to produce in an automatic way a list of best-sellers at the same time precise and serious. The persons in charge affirm that the system collects the data of 4 500 sales outlets, including independent bookstores, chains of bookstores like Barnes & Noble and of the chains of supermarkets like Costco . Contrary to the lists for the general public, the results are extremely detailed and extremely expensive. BookScan invoice at least 75 000 USD per year, but this system is able, inter alia, to provide a precise image of the sales at the regional level, which is often priceless for the distributers.

Creation

It is the multitude of purchasers which makes a best-seller. However, the choice of the book is a process which occurs front. They are not all the editors who wish to sell best-sellers, he is enough to think of the small houses of edition which are satisfied with their situation, preferring a better control on their production. On another side, the large publishers, they, want best-sellers regularly, because they ensure their financial survival. Consequently, the stakes are high. Publisher' S Weekly affirms that 200 000 new books are published each year in the United States, and that less 1 % become best-sellers.

To arrive to maintain flow regular of best-sellers, main actors of this industry, literary agents, editors, publishers, bookstores and media (particularly those who diffuse literary criticisms and lists of best-sellers), act as guards and “godfathers” of this flow bound for the purchasers. In the United States, five larger publishers: Random House , HarperCollins , Time Warner , Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster , sell 80 % of the bestsellers. If one adds the contribution of the five publishers which follow in the face: Von Holtzbrinck , Hyperion , Rodale , Houghton Mifflin and Harlequin , it is 98 % of all bestsellers sold with the E. - U.

There exists at least a scientific method to try to create best-sellers. In 2004, Didier Sornette, a working theorist with UCLA, while being based on the sales of Amazon.com , created a mathematical model to predict the potential of a book to becoming a best-seller knowing only the first sales. This model could be used to adjust the advertizing campaigns.

Cultural role

Although the definition of best-seller is simple according to any dictionary: “delivers popular among the best salesmen”, his definition cultural is definitely more complex. Since the lists of best-sellers intended for the general public do not give the criteria retained, the such sales, the periods of sales, the sales by area, and so on, a book is a best-seller if a “authority” affirms that it is the case. For example, to label a book as “best-seller” does not have as much impact than to affirm than it is gaining Prix Booker, although in the first case, one bases itself on the sales, whereas in the second case, one bases itself on a list known in the the Commonwealth. A book labelled “best-seller” is likely more to be sold with a general public. For this reason, “best-seller” took a popular significance based on empirical data. For example, a best-seller of summer is often selected well before the end of summer season, but that indicates a book which can be read by all the holiday makers.

With the E. - U., the term underground bestseller (that one can translate by “best-seller of the shade”) makes it possible to better include/understand why a best-seller is often created without taking account of the real sales. In the years 1990, HarperCollins suggested that a novel had the potential to become a best-seller by announcing that the preceding book of the same author was a underground bestseller . The novel became a best-seller.

Bonds with cinema industry

The best-sellers plays a significant part in cinema industry general public. In the United States, there exists a long tradition of adaptation of the best-sellers of fiction. Several, if not a majority, modern films known as traditional are adaptations of best-sellers. On the lists of best-sellers of Publisher' S Weekly , we find inter alia:

1969, #2: the Godfather
1970, #1: Love Story
1971, #2: the Exorcist
1974, #3: Teeth of the sea

In the United States, several of the best-sellers of fiction become one day or the other a film with large budget. An American best-seller published during the last 40 years will be adapted for a film to large budget.

External bonds

The Book Standard Bestseller Charts, of Nielsen BookScan . The list of the first 10 titles is free.
Bestseller Lists from 1900 to 1998
Best-Selling Books from 2000 to Present

Sources

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