This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Alright, last month we had a question, I believe it was episode 2849, 2849, about launching a book in 2025. We had an author who has a book coming out and she was wondering about what are some things I need to do for my book launch. I also have a book coming out in 2025 on time anxiety, so I've been thinking a lot about what does that look like. My book comes out in April, not sure when Taylor's book comes out, but in any case she's back today with a follow-up question. The follow-up question is how many copies do you need to sell to hit the New York Times bestseller list?
This is a topic that people wonder about a lot, especially anybody who's writing a book, and there's a great deal of mystery around it, like nobody knows. That's actually inaccurate because some people do know, a lot of people just have the wrong idea about it. I'm going to give you a very specific answer in case you've ever been curious about it or if you want to write a book at some point and you like the idea of having a goal, I will give you a goal and some details. It is a daunting goal. I'll just tell you right now, it's a big number, but obviously some people do it.
The question, what does it take to make the New York Times bestseller list? That is today's episode. We're going to hear the listener question and my answer after this quick shout out to our sponsor. Hello, Taylor here again from Seattle. I've been listening to your advice on launching a book and it got me thinking, how many copies do I actually need to sell in one week to hit the New York Times bestseller list?
I know it's probably a tough goal, but I am determined to give it my best shot. If you have any insights on the magic number and what it really takes to get on that list, I would love to hear them. Also, are there any strategies that can help me reach that target? Thanks again for your help. Taylor good to hear from you once again.
Let's get specific here, hitting the New York Times bestseller list is a major goal for many authors. It's also extremely stressful. I know this from experience. It's also very challenging unless you are very famous and can move a lot of books. So how many books am I talking about?
Well, the exact number can vary depending on the competition in any given week, right? Because there's always, there's a set number of slots. And if other authors are coming out with books, then it's all relative. However, I have a good friend, Rory Vaden, he's a great guy, Rory, R-O-R-Y. He has done extensive analysis on this with a consultancy group that he owns.
And he says, basically, you need to sell at least 18,000 copies in a single week to have a strong chance of making the list. Now 18,000 copies, that needs to be print copies. So that doesn't include eBooks, that doesn't include audio books. This is also US only. If you're like, oh, but I'm selling to a global market, doesn't matter for this.
For the New York Times bestseller list, it is US print sales. And then it's even more than that because you can't have all of your sales going through Amazon. They want to see sales coming through lots of different bookstores. They want to see it geographically distributed. So it's not just everybody in your town buying the 18,000 copies of a book and there's more to it.
But if you think about it like that, okay, I need to sell at least 18,000 copies in a single week. Can I do that or is that too difficult? And if it's too difficult, just let that goal go and focus on writing a great book and reaching as many people as you can and going beyond the single week strategy, which is actually more important. I've known a number of author friends who have had that New York Times title, but then basically nobody buys the book in the second week. So they're kind of a one hit wonder, much better for it to be the other way where the sales just continue to go on week after week.
And that's rare too, but it's actually much more desirable. Now one more thing I would say though, pre-orders matter a lot. And you know this, if you know much about books or if you follow any authors on social media, they're always like, hey, pre-order my book. Why does that matter so much? It's because all the pre-orders for months and weeks go into the first week's sales figures.
So if you're like, man, I can't sell 18,000 copies in a week, well, maybe let's not even say 18,000, let's say whatever your big number is, like if you want to sell 2000 copies in a week, you're like, that's still a lot. Okay, but if you're selling it over several months, if you're trying to encourage pre-orders, can you get 2000 people or whatever the number is to pre-order over the course of weeks and months and then all those sales go through week one? Well, maybe that's more realistic. So that's why pre-orders matter so much among a couple of other reasons, but to keep it on track here. So in conclusion, at least 18,000 copies sold in a single week, again, print only.
And we could say a lot more about it. I like to geek out on these things, but I know most of our audience probably doesn't care. So just remember that number and it's a tough number. So if you know somebody who's done it, congratulate them. And I also think as an author, don't worry too much about it because there's lots of other things you can do to be successful and serve your readers and actually write the books that you want to write, which is most important.
Taylor, I hope to see you on book tour. Let's do something fun in 2025. Listeners, I hope to see you as well. I'll be touring a bit in April and May, I think we'll see in a couple of months. If you have a question or a comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions, much more is coming up.
This was episode 2,870. That's all for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. from The Onward Project.
