How to have a bestseller

I’m very fortunate to have had two Sunday Times bestsellers, and to have spent several weeks in the book charts.

Part of my success in that regard was a focus on the charts themselves, how they work and what they measure. The best thing about these charts is that they are pretty transparent – they tell you how many each title sold. If you’re trying to get into the top ten you can assess the scale of the challenge.

Most weeks a book gets into the hardback non fiction chart selling fewer than 1500 copies. It’s not zero, but it’s also the sort of number that most authors could contemplate selling.

For each title I’ve focussed on driving sales, through lining up talks, going to conferences and running webinars. Also, I’m not interested in gatekeeping. I’ve shared this approach with a number of other people. At least 4 people I know have had bestsellers by focussing in this way.

People often ask me to ‘jump on a quick call’ to compare notes, or they offer to buy me lunch to pick my brains. I get so many of those approaches I’d never get anything done if I took them all up. Instead I spent a week writing down all of my learnings here. Feel free to use them and to share them.

My objective when writing this PDF was simply to help other people get into the charts, so forgive me if it looks like selling books is the be all and end all in life.

More than anything I know how little money writers earn from books, and if they can earn some other symbols of success by copying what I learned then that makes me happy.

Latest version: How to have a bestseller (August 2023)

I’m always keen to hear your feedback. Email me and tell me what you think I should change next time.