2/28/08

The LDS Best Seller List

The national market has the NYT Best Seller list to acknowledge fiction titles that are selling like hotcakes. The LDS market has no equivalent. (The LDSBA used to do a Top Ten list, but they don't anymore.)

While I can't really reproduce an NYT type best selling list [because 1) publishers aren't going to easily divulge that info to me, and 2) I don't have time to collect it], with your help we can create a cumulative best-seller list.

Although copies sold is more often an indicator of marketing than quality, if a book sells over 10,000 copies, that's saying something. While good books may be overlooked because they weren't promoted effectively, a bad book can only get so far on hype.

With that in mind, we'd like to acknowledge top selling LDS fiction over on the LDS Fiction blog. For these purposes, LDS fiction is defined as books published for the LDS market by LDS publishers.

We have four categories we'd like to recognize:

Bronze—sold 10,000 copies* or more.

Silver—sold 25,000 copies* or more.

Gold—sold 50,000 copies* or more.

Platinum—sold 100,000 copies* or more.

If you are the publisher or the author of an LDS fiction title that has hit any of these sales levels and is still in print, please e-mail the following info: Title, Author, Publisher, Release Date.

*All combined printings and formats for the title, books and CD sales.

6 comments:

Jennie said...

Is this book sales only? Book and CD combined? Single printing or combined printings?

Anonymous said...

I think that this is a fantastic idea. The brief run that the LDSBA had with their top 10 was very interesting.

Of course, this is a self-reported thing, but the market is small enough (and you are semi-anonymous enough) that I'm sure someone will be able to cry foul if some number seems suspect.

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LDS Publisher:

How did you arrive at these numbers for the levels? Perhaps I have a skewed sense of the market but I'd be more inclined to have a 25,000 level and just dub anything over 100,000 a bona fide hit -- especially since this is limited to fiction titles.

Annette Lyon said...

Great idea. Will you keep a running list on your sidebar, maybe?

I've got one book within scratching distance of the bronze level. Maybe in the next few months it'll crack it. :)

LDS_Publisher said...

William, thanks for the reality check. I was using non-fiction numbers. I have modified the levels according to your suggestions.

LDS_Publisher said...

Jennie, yes, all combined printings, formats, etc. for the title.

Annette, yes, I will have some easy links on the sidebar of both blogs.

charrette said...

Do you have a non-fiction category? I designed a book that has sold around 50,000 copies already. And I expect that another I designed the cover for has hit the 10,000 mark already.