How to Make a Book into a Bestseller: A Comprehensive Digest

The New York Times bestseller list is the holy grail of commercial publishing—a ranking that can transform a book's fate, generate millions in revenue, and confer a lifetime credential on its author. But as Planet Money host Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi discovers while tracking the fate of the show's own first book, the list is not a simple reflection of which books sold the most copies. It is a secretive, journalistic product with opaque methodology, and it has inspired nearly a century of attempts to game, hack, and manipulate it—from mass hallucinations engineered by a late-night radio host to bulk-buying schemes laundered through shadowy firms. This episode follows the Planet Money book through its launch week, weaving together the history of bestseller-list shenanigans with the very real anxiety of whether the show's own book would make the cut.

0:00The Moment of Truth: Launch Week and the Bestseller Obsession

A week after the Planet Money book launched, Horowitz-Ghazi visits Tom Mayer, the book's editor at W.W. Norton, in his New York office. It's the day the weekly bestseller lists are released, and the tension is palpable. "I've got butterflies. I'm very nervous," Mayer says. Over the preceding week, bookstores across the country—from chains like Barnes & Noble to independents like Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville—have been logging sales and reporting them through an anonymous department inside the *New York Times*. Mayer has been nervously checking the partial sales data he can access, but he lacks the full picture. "I sort of feel like on election night when you're counting the votes in the various counties across the state," he explains. He knows what his book sold, but not what competitors sold—including a high-profile new book by *New Yorker* writer Patrick Radden Keefe and a divorce memoir by Bell Burden that had dominated the list for months.

The *New York Times* is famously opaque about its methodology. "It's like we receive this email that's like the smoke after a papal conclave," Mayer says. "Here it is. Not going to tell you how we got to this information, but here's the list." For most readers, the bestseller list seems straightforward—a simple revelation of the nation's literary preferences. But as Horowitz-Ghazi discovers, it is anything but.

6:19The Power and Mystery of the Bestseller List

Laura McGrath, a professor at Temple University who teaches a class on the history of the bestseller, explains why the *New York Times* list matters above all others. "The biggest and the most important bestseller list is the *New York Times* Bestseller List," she says. It's the one publishers track, the one readers trust, and the one writers covet. Crucially, the list is not just a signal of what's already selling—it is a major cause of new sales. Bestsellers get premium placement in bookstores and online, and the designation itself functions as free advertising. "It has a snowball effect where being named a bestseller becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," McGrath explains. "Readers now begin flocking to this book because it is very popular and it must be popular for a reason."

The best shot a book has at making the list is during its opening week, when publicity is highest and all pre-orders count toward first-week sales. The actual number of copies needed to break onto the list varies week to week depending on competition—sometimes a few thousand copies is enough—but the principle is simple: the more you can convince people to buy in that opening window, the better your odds. Yet the *Times*' methodology remains secret. The paper states that the list is based on a weekly survey of tens of thousands of bookstores, but which stores, how the data is weighted, and who crunches the numbers are all undisclosed. "My assumption is that these data scientists are operating under rock-solid NDAs," McGrath says. "They're in a basement fortress somewhere."

9:29Chapter One: The Mass Hallucination of "I, Libertine"

McGrath traces the history of bestseller-list hacking through four distinct chapters. The first begins in the 1940s, not long after the national list was created. By the mid-1950s, the list had become so prominent that it symbolized, for some critics, the mindless herd mentality of American popular taste. The foremost critic was Gene Shepherd—"Shep" to his listeners—an eccentric late-night radio personality who hosted a show from 1:00 AM to 5:30 AM. Shep divided the world into "night people" (the bohemian types who listened to his show) and "day people" (the squares who commuted to work and relied on bestseller lists to guide their taste).

One night, Shep concocted an elaborate prank. He asked his listeners to suggest a title for a fake book, then chose "I, Libertine" from the calls. He invented a fake author, Frederick R. Ewing, a former British officer and scholar of 18th-century erotica. Over the following weeks, Shep's legion of night people began requesting the made-up book from bookstores across New York City. The phenomenon quickly spread beyond the city—booksellers in London, Paris, and Rome started getting requests. Bookstores desperately tried to order the nonexistent book. People began pretending they had read it to seem cool. Book reviewers claimed to have had lunch with the fictional Freddie Ewing. "It becomes a sort of mass hallucination," McGrath says. The hoax proved Shep's point about the self-fulfilling power of hype. In a final twist, a real publisher reached out to Shep, convinced him to team up with a ghostwriter, and actually published "I, Libertine" under the fake author's name. The buzz around the made-up book willed it into reality.

13:57Chapter Two: Jacqueline Susann and the Geography of Sales

The second chapter centers on Jacqueline Susann, the author of the 1966 blockbuster *Valley of the Dolls*. Susann was a larger-than-life character—an actress turned novelist who cultivated a tough, cynical public persona. But her real innovation was in how she approached the business of book promotion. Susann is credited as one of the pioneers of the modern book tour, traveling across the country to generate sales through live author events. More importantly, she directed her charm offensive at a new target: the booksellers themselves.

Susann cultivated close friendships with booksellers in different cities, and through those relationships, she figured out which stores were reporting their sales to the *New York Times*. She then directed her readers—and purchased books herself—from those specific retailers to ensure a big, splashy first week. The strategy worked spectacularly. *Valley of the Dolls* became number one on the *New York Times* bestseller list, held the Guinness World Record for bestselling novel of all time, and was turned into a hit movie. McGrath notes that Susann's story reveals a crucial insight: not all book sales are equal. Sales at particular stores that report to the *Times* matter more than others, and authors who can identify and target those stores gain a significant advantage.

16:04Chapter Three: William Peter Blatty Sues the *New York Times*

The third chapter involves William Peter Blatty, author of the 1971 horror classic *The Exorcist*. In the early 1980s, Blatty published a sequel, *Legion*. When it failed to appear on the bestseller list, he became suspicious. His publisher had distributed 84,000 copies, and the book had appeared on other bestseller lists. Blatty inferred he had sold more copies than some books that did make the *Times* list. So he did what any profit-seeking American novelist would: he filed a lawsuit.

Blatty alleged that the *Times*' exclusion of his book had cost him millions in lost profits—not just from book sales, but from lucrative paperback rights and potential movie deals. The *New York Times* fought back, arguing that its bestseller list was protected speech—editorial content, not a transparent statistical accounting. The *Times*' lawyer argued that "editors are entitled to edit" and that the paper was entitled to have its own list. The court ruled in favor of the *Times*, finding that the list was editorial content protected under the First Amendment. The ruling revealed something fundamental: even if a book sells more copies than some books on the list, it has no guaranteed place. The list is based on a secret formula that the *Times* does not have to disclose. "It was absolutely head-spinning," Horowitz-Ghazi says, "not unlike the head of Linda Blair."

20:03Chapter Four: Bulk Sales, Scarlet Daggers, and Book Laundering

The fourth and final chapter brings us to the modern era, where gaming the bestseller list has become a lucrative cottage industry. The primary hack is bulk sales. Instead of trying to generate organic grassroots demand, some authors—especially in nonfiction—use institutional resources to juice their numbers directly. A politician might ask their super PAC to buy copies. A minister might ask their megachurch. A business leader might hire a firm to purchase large quantities of the book, almost guaranteeing a spot on the list.

The blueprint for this strategy was exposed in 1995, when the authors of *The Discipline of Market Leaders* were found to have essentially bought massive amounts of their own books to boost sales. It was a major scandal for the *Times*, exposing a vulnerability in their system. In response, the paper introduced a tool to combat bulk buying: a dagger symbol placed next to books that have been purchased through bulk sales. "It's like a little buyer beware symbol," McGrath says. "It is not a badge of honor. It is a mark of shame. This is a scarlet dagger."

Despite the risk, the economic incentive is enormous. Nonfiction authors who can call themselves *New York Times* bestselling authors can charge significantly higher speaker fees. "If you are a business writer in the thought leader space, being stamped with the *New York Times* seal of approval means that you can charge people more money," McGrath explains. To avoid the scarlet dagger, authors have developed sophisticated laundering schemes. They book speaking gigs at companies like Google or Microsoft around the time of their book release, then ask the company to buy a certain number of books instead of taking their usual speaking fee. One author told McGrath that when a company protested they were being asked to buy more books than they had employees, the author essentially said, "I don't care if you burn the books as long as those sales are logged." Authors then hire specialized firms to launder the purchases, buying books in small batches from stores that likely report to the *Times*, to avoid triggering bulk-sale alarms. The whole strategy can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars—with no guarantee of success.

25:10The *Times* Responds: Defending the List's Integrity

Remarkably, just days before the episode aired, the *New York Times* agreed to speak on the record. Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor who oversees standards across the newsroom including the Bestseller List team, acknowledged that gaming occurs. "We know that gaming does go on. People try to attempt to influence their ranking on the list, but we have a lot of steps in our process in terms of the analysis that we do with that confidential reporting from booksellers." Healy pushed back on the characterization of the *Times*' methodology as a "secret formula," arguing that a formula sounds too simple. He described the list as capturing the majority of book sales across the country, based on data, not personal preference. "Our Bestseller List has nothing to do, for instance, with our book review or whether a book has been assessed by one of our critics," he said. "Our editors on the book side aren't involved in the Bestseller List." The core purpose, Healy explained, is to give book buyers an unbiased picture of what their fellow readers have chosen with their wallets.

31:02The Planet Money Book's Own Strategy: Live Events and Pre-Orders

For the Planet Money book, neither the show's executive producer Alex Goldmark nor Norton's publicist Rachel Salzman was interested in engaging a gray-market book launderer. Instead, they pursued a more traditional strategy centered on pre-orders and live events. Salzman, Norton's senior publicity director, began planning the launch a year in advance. "Getting the timing right is key," she said, "because if you do all these things in sequence, close together, that is how you leverage yourself onto the list."

The first pillar was publicity. NPR itself was a major platform—the fact that Planet Money was reporting this very series meant hundreds of thousands of people would hear about the book. The second pillar was pre-orders. Norton convinced the team to put the book on pre-sale six months before launch, offering an incentive: a poster based on the show's "Laws of the Office" episode. The third pillar was a live event tour. Instead of traditional book readings, Planet Money would put on live shows, and crucially, tickets would include a book purchase. This model meant that every ticket sold counted as a pre-order, potentially adding thousands of copies to first-week sales. It also meant NPR would not make any money from ticket sales—the venues would get a cut, Norton would get book revenue, and each sale would go through independent bookstores that likely reported to the *Times*.

37:29The Launch: Triumph and a Poster Disaster

The tour launched on Monday, April 6, with an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The book officially launched the next day. But almost immediately, a problem emerged. The highly touted poster—the incentive that had driven pre-orders—could not be shipped with the book due to printing and logistics issues. It had to be sent separately, and customers needed to fill out a separate form to receive it. That message did not reach many pre-order customers. Within days, roughly a third of the Amazon reviews for the Planet Money book were one-star reviews—not about the content, but about the missing poster. "Book looks great, can't wait to read it. But the poster didn't come," one review said. Goldmark scrambled to get a promo into the podcast feed apologizing and providing instructions. But the damage to the book's Amazon rating during its crucial first week was done.

Despite the setback, the publicity blitz continued. Planet Money hosts appeared on radio shows and podcasts across the country, from Hawaii to New York. The tour crisscrossed the nation. And then, eight days after launch, Horowitz-Ghazi returned to Tom Mayer's office at Norton to learn the result. A group led by Rachel Salzman knocked on the door with a laptop. "We have news," they said. The Planet Money book had hit number three on the *New York Times* print hardcover nonfiction list. "Oh my God," Mayer said. "This is better than I thought we'd do, honestly." The book also made the combined print and ebook list at number three. Goldmark, reached by phone while on tour, was stunned. "I thought we were gonna like, skirt by just at the bottom in a best case scenario," he said.

44:47What the Bestseller List Actually Means

Making the list has concrete financial implications. Norton can now put "*New York Times* Bestseller" on every ad, re-approach accounts to keep the book in stores longer, and advertise in new ways. But the economics of book publishing are slow-moving. Tom Mayer explained that publishers often don't get a full financial picture until years after publication. "All books have a pretty predictable sales trajectory where they go up and then they eventually decay over time. The higher you can start, the farther that tail goes." Getting to profitability on any given book—even a bestseller—can involve multiple print runs of the hardcover and then the paperback edition. For the Planet Money book, there is also the academic market, where it will be used in courseware and classrooms.

The million-dollar advance that Norton paid to NPR was doled out in four installments, with agents taking roughly 15% commission. NPR has received three installments so far, much of which was spent on writing, travel, reporting, illustrators, and a fact-checker. If the book sells well enough to cover the advance, NPR will start receiving royalties—a few dollars per hardcover. Selling enough to earn out the advance is relatively rare, and even hitting the bestseller list is no guarantee of a fortune. But it does open the door to a second book deal, potentially with a larger advance. As Horowitz-Ghazi joked with Goldmark, "Is it finally time to pitch *50 Shades of Green*?"

Conclusion

This episode matters because it demystifies one of the most powerful yet opaque institutions in American culture. The *New York Times* bestseller list is not a simple tally of sales; it is a journalistic product with a secret methodology, protected by the First Amendment, that has been hacked, gamed, and litigated for nearly a century. The Planet Money book's own journey—from the poster disaster to the number-three debut—illustrates both the power of the list and the sheer unpredictability of trying to engineer success within its rules. What stays with the listener is the paradox at the heart of the system: the list's authority depends on its secrecy, but that secrecy invites manipulation. And in the end, even the best-laid plans can be undone by a missing poster.

Key takeaways

• The *New York Times* bestseller list is not a transparent ranking of sales but a journalistic product with a secret methodology, protected as editorial content under the First Amendment.
• The list has been gamed for nearly a century, from the "I, Libertine" radio hoax in the 1950s to modern bulk-buying schemes laundered through specialized firms.
• Jacqueline Susann pioneered the strategy of identifying which bookstores report to the *Times* and directing sales to those specific stores.
• The *Times* uses a "dagger" symbol to flag books that have been purchased through bulk sales, but the economic incentive to risk the scarlet dagger remains high because the "New York Times bestselling author" credential can dramatically increase speaker fees.
• The Planet Money book made the list at number three despite a major setback: roughly a third of its early Amazon reviews were one-star complaints about a missing promotional poster.
• Making the bestseller list does not guarantee profitability; publishers often need multiple print runs and paperback editions to earn out a book's advance.
• The list's self-fulfilling power means that getting on it is both a cause and an effect of sales—a snowball effect that the *Times* itself helps create.