Study the bestselling nonfiction... to write a bestseller...

[Dien Rice]

Many of us are "stuck inside" due to the coronavirus... but for some of us that gives us the opportunity to advance our projects...

One project I know many people have in mind is to write...

I think, if you're planning to write nonfiction, it's a good idea to study nonfiction books...

...Especially nonfiction bestsellers.

What do they have in common?

What patterns do you notice?

Can you get on the bestseller lists yourself?

If you want to take this approach (which is what I'm doing now), it's a good idea to study past nonfiction bestsellers!

Here's a list of the bestselling nonfiction books, for every year from 1918 to 2018... 100 years' worth!

Some of these are bestsellers because they are written by "celebrities"...

Best to ignore those ones, and focus on those written by "nobodies"... What made them bestsellers?

Is there a pattern?

Here are the Biggest Nonfiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years
https://lithub.com/here-are-the-bigg...ast-100-years/

Best wishes,

Dien

[GordonJ]

Thanks Dien,

I went over the list, year by year. It is a "rich" person's reading list, taken from PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, which only dealt with mainstream publishing houses.

Take the DEPRESSION era, and on this list between 1929 and 1940 we see, again, books that the people with money would read.

Meanwhile, back at the dustbowl, savvy publisher Julius-Halderman was selling millions of little blue books, into the 1930's until J. E. Hoover put him on the enemies list.

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY viewed mail order books as beneath them, and their lists affirm this.

But the one thing on both sides of the coin, the two headed publishing bonanza, and the ONE big secret to writing a best seller is...

SELF INTEREST.

For every biography of a famous person that was published and made the best seller lists (mostly contrived through a hand full of selected NYC bookstore sales) there were 10X the number of books sold on

Diet, Weight Loss, Personal Power (think Dale Carnegie) and HOW TO.

By 100x there have been more BEST sellers on HOW TO something or other than the most popular bios and elite lists of books.

In Akron, OH, the great Saalfield Publishing company thrived, from 1903 into the 1960's. Their childrens books and toys were sold both in bookstores and via mail order. Sure, these were not non fiction books, but still, most lists of any kind won't include their sales volume in them.


You won't find Ben Suarez on any best-seller lists, and those usually require sales of around 25,000 copies, he has sold hundreds of thousands of 7 Steps to Freedom books. So many MAIL order companies were ignored by mainstream publishing, I just wanted to add...
If you want to write a best seller,

Think about what people want, and stay within the Parade of Life and you'll have a constant seller on your hands.

The list was a rabbit hole for me Dien, spent too much time looking it over.

GordonJ

PS My latest work is: YOUR FUTURE. How to Know it NOW.

If interested, I'll post up a few excerpts here.

Originally Posted by Dien Rice

Many of us are "stuck inside" due to the coronavirus... but for some of us that gives us the opportunity to advance our projects...

One project I know many people have in mind is to write...

I think, if you're planning to write nonfiction, it's a good idea to study nonfiction books...

...Especially nonfiction bestsellers.

What do they have in common?

What patterns do you notice?

Can you get on the bestseller lists yourself?

If you want to take this approach (which is what I'm doing now), it's a good idea to study past nonfiction bestsellers!

Here's a list of the bestselling nonfiction books, for every year from 1918 to 2018... 100 years' worth!

Some of these are bestsellers because they are written by "celebrities"...

Best to ignore those ones, and focus on those written by "nobodies"... What made them bestsellers?

Is there a pattern?

Here are the Biggest Nonfiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years
https://lithub.com/here-are-the-bigg...ast-100-years/

Best wishes,

Dien