About this episode
This episode explores the strategies and tactics used to make a book a bestseller, including both legitimate and questionable methods.
In the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how does a book actually end up there? There is, of course, a playbook that publishers and authors use to try to gin up enough sales at the beginning of a new book’s life to launch it onto the list. But there is also a world of more shadowy techniques – a whole history of hacking shenanigans going back nearly a century. Today on the show, the fourth episode in our series : Planet Money sets out to make the Planet Money book a best seller, and along the way, we uncover all the outlandish strategies that people have tried to hack their way onto the New York Times Best Seller List. There will be mass hallucinations, legal exorcisms, shady book launderers, and scarlet daggers. And we learn the hard way how trying to engineer your way onto the list, just might be the thing that keeps you from getting there. Related: - “ Night People's Hoax On Day People Makes Hit With Book Folks ” - New York Times : “ Jacqueline Susann Dead at 53; Novelist Wrote 'Valley of Dolls' ” - New York Times : “ Blatty Sue Times On Best-Seller List ” - New York Times…
People in this episode
Host: Planet Money
Topics covered
- book publishing
- bestsellers
- marketing strategies
- New York Times Best Seller List
- commercial publishing
- book sales
Keywords
- bestseller
- New York Times
- book marketing
- publishing
- sales strategies
- commercial publishing
- book hacks
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek
Books & works: Valley of Dolls
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