The New York Times Best Seller List
is a bullshit list.
It isn’t based on sales.
If it were,
romance would take up
almost all of the slots
on the fiction list.
It is what they call
a curated list
which means
someone chooses which books
to put on the list.
They prefer not to put
romance on their list.
Sure, they put
a couple romance novels
so the list doesn’t look that fake
but those books
usually either
have outrageously high sales
or
there’s some sort of connection
to the paper.
This month,
it became even more difficult
to make the list
as they eliminated
the eBook list completely
and reduced the combined list
to 15 slots.
Unfortunately,
when romance writers
talk about goals,
almost half of the writers
have
“Make the NYT Best Seller List”
as one of their goals.
If that is their goal,
they likely shouldn’t
be writing romance.
When setting your goals,
ensure that
a) it is achievable
and
b) you WANT to spend
time and money
achieving it.