You’ve seen those websites and Twitter profiles in which someone boasts of being an Amazon bestseller. You’ve probably seen a lot of them. That’s because the term “Amazon Bestseller” doesn’t mean a thing. People who throw their books up for free on Kindle, or for 99 cents, and then sell 10 copies, can become “a number one Amazon bestseller” if they choose the right category and get a few friends to download the book. Let’s not forget the guy who became a “#1 Amazon bestseller” in a few minutes by uploading a photo of his foot to the Kindle publishing platform.
I was once on the mailing list of a very energetic self-styled publishing guru who touted his books as bestsellers. After receiving a number of these emails, in which he asked readers to write back with questions, I politely asked which bestseller lists his book had been on. He wrote back saying that the major bestseller lists — The New York Times, USA Today, Indiebound, and etc. — were bogus. While there are plenty of reasons to question exactly how the major bestseller lists are configured, there’s no question that getting on one of those lists requires a person to actually sell quite a few books. With Amazon, that simply isn’t the case.
Calling your novel an “Amazon bestseller” won’t get you anywhere with publishers. That said, true sales of a self-published book can definitely be a feather in your cap when you reach out to agents and publishers. If you can show them a track record of actual paid sales–for example, you sold 20,000 copies of your self-published ebook in one year–you may very well grab their interest. But publishers know that an Amazon bestseller may have sold a grand total of five copies, so they won’t be hoodwinked by the term, and it will probably make you seem unprofessional.
So, if you aim to self-publish, beware of those guys (and there are plenty of them) who charge you money–in the form of courses, webinars, or books–to tell you how to become an Amazon bestseller. What they’re selling isn’t really worth paying for. Save your money for a real writing workshop with a teacher who knows what he or she is talking about.
Even better, spend your cash on a few great novels to help you intimately study the craft chapter by chapter. Just as there’s no shortcut for becoming a genuine bestseller, there’s no shortcut to learning how to write a great novel: it happens when you write, revise, and write some more, and when you immerse yourself in narrative craft, one great book at a time.