Read This: Just how many copies do you have to sell to make the bestseller list?
Much as political pundits can manipulate graphs and charts to back up their point, it turns out writers can easily claim the title of “bestselling author” with a little selective searching. As author and publisher Kevin J. Anderson points out in a new piece for Boing Boing, the proliferation of multiple bestseller lists that are then subdivided into even more genre-specific lists makes it very easy for people to find their work at the top of some list somewhere. For instance, one of the books his company published sold about 80 copies yet turned out to be the top seller on Amazon’s “holiday anthologies” list and could therefore truthfully claim to be a No. 1 bestseller.