Money Talks: The Price of Status
A year ago, I published my second book The Wealth Ladder. It’s sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and hit the New York Times bestseller list in its third week of publication.
At the time, I was thrilled that my work was finally getting some mainstream media attention. After nine years of writing online, it felt like I had finally made it to the big leagues.
But since then, I’ve learned that many of these bestseller lists aren’t what they initially seem. For example, Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money has now sold over 10 million copies worldwide, yet has never made the NY Times bestseller list. Want to know why?
Because he didn’t publish his book with one of the Big Five American publishers (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, or Macmillan). If you self-publish or publish your book with a non-Big Five publisher, your chance of making the NY Times list is slim to none even if you sell millions of copies. This is why Just Keep Buying will never make the NY Times list either.
But even if you do sell lots of books and are with a Big Five publisher, there’s still no guarantee. Unfortunately, the NY Times has plenty of discretion in how they choose which books to include on their list. For example, Rob Henderson’s Troubled fit all the criteria of a book that should’ve made the list. It had the right initial sales and won multiple book awards, but was never included. Was it the underlying message of the book that the NY Times didn’t like? I’m not sure.
But I’ve also learned that some people were able to get on the NY Times list simply by spending enough money. This shouldn’t be possible, but it is. Unlike the USA Today bestseller list, which is based on total sales, the NY Times list cares about types of sales as well.
For example, if you sell 15,000 books in a week, you will very likely make the USA Today bestseller list. It doesn’t matter if you have one order of 15,000 books or 15,000 orders of one book. USA Today treats these sales the same.
The NY Times doesn’t. One order of 15,000 books means you convinced one large corporate client to buy your book for their employees. 15,000 orders of one book means you convinced 15,000 people to buy your book. These aren’t the same. However, there is a way to game the system to make one large order look like many small orders (to inflate your perceived organic reach).
I know an author who spent over half a million dollars doing this and successfully got on the NY Times list. The crux of their strategy was a “giveaway” where their readers provided their name and address to have “a chance” to win a free copy of their book. They collected 5,000 names and addresses for the giveaway. But instead of giving away 1 book or 10 books or even 100 books, they gave away 2,000.
The trick was to make it look like each book was purchased (not given away) by using a third-party logistics firm to do the order fulfillment. So these books show up in the sales systems as 2,000 individual orders instead of what they actually are—a single order of 2,000 books paid for by the author themselves.
Maybe I am naive, but when I first heard about this scheme I was shocked. Isn’t this basically buying your way onto the list? I had heard about authors trying to buy their way onto the NY Times list in the past, but my impression was that this was impossible today. I guess I was wrong.
Though my initial reaction was disgust, I’m a little more understanding after thinking about it a bit more. Because while this strategy might seem like cheating, it still requires something valuable—$500k. That $500k had to be earned and spent for merely a chance at success.
I’m fortunate that I didn’t have to do that. What I had to do instead was spend 9 years developing my ideas, building my audience, and coming up with a clever marketing strategy (e.g., I spent $500 sending $2 bill bookmarks inside my book to financial influencers). My cost to market my book was $500 and thousands of hours of my time. Theirs was $500k.
If someone offered me the choice between $500k and the “NY Times bestselling author” title, I’d take the $500k in a heartbeat. But not everyone would. Some would rather trade their money for status.
Of course, it’s easy for me to say this. I got the title without writing the check. Questioning it costs me nothing. But the uncomfortable truth is that I don’t know how much of my making the list was based on the quality of my work versus being associated with a Big Five publisher. Nobody who appears briefly on the list does.
This isn’t just a problem with the NY Times list either. It’s happening all over the place. For example, almost all of the book accounts on Instagram are being paid to promote many of the books they highlight on their channels. You can buy your way onto the Forbes 30 under 30 list (at least in India).
These are just a few examples, but they’ve made me come to an unfortunate realization—money talks. And if you are willing to spend enough money, you can get people to believe you are a wine expert, a German heiress, or even a NY Times bestselling author.
I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is. Tai Lopez spent $50,000 per day on YouTube ads and became a “knowledge influencer” despite no qualifications other than owning lots of books.
If you spend enough money, you can convince people that you are whoever you want. But if I were you, I’d keep quiet and save the money instead.
Thank you for reading.
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This is post 512. Any code I have related to this post can be found here with the same numbering:
