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At least once a month, someone contacts me and says they want me to write them a bestseller. I have to talk them down. Usually they go to someone else.
I understand why they leave. They came to me with a clear goal, and I told them their goal was wrong. See what really makes a book valuable. That is not what most people want to hear from the person they are about to pay $60,000 or more. They want enthusiasm, a plan, and a promise. What I give them instead is the truth: chasing a bestseller is the wrong mindset for almost every business author, and the authors who chase it usually end up with a book that underperforms on every metric that actually matters.
Across 54+ ghostwriting projects, some of the books became bestsellers. None of them became bestsellers because we set out to write one. The audience responded because we wrote the right book for the right readers. That distinction sounds subtle but it changes everything about how the book gets written, who it serves, and what it produces after publication.
The Bestseller Fantasy
When someone says they want a bestseller, what they usually mean is they want validation. For more, see don’t make these 8 mistakes when writing a bestseller. The credibility of saying “I wrote a bestseller. For more, see stop chasing bestseller lists.” The bragging rights at conferences. The assumption that a bestselling book and a successful book are the same thing.
The problem is that bestseller status and book success are different things. You can hit a bestseller list by selling a few thousand copies in a compressed timeframe through bulk purchases, launch campaigns, or coordinated buying. Real list appearance, hollow achievement. Books that hit lists through artificial velocity frequently disappear within weeks, generate no sustained readership, and produce none of the career results the author expected.
Meanwhile, books that never touch a bestseller list quietly generate speaking invitations, consulting contracts, client inquiries, and credibility that compounds for years. The 2024 Business Book ROI Study of 301 published authors found that ghostwritten books generate a median of $92,500 in total revenue. That revenue comes from what the book makes possible, not from copies sold. A book that sells 500 copies to exactly the right 500 people can generate more career value than a book that sells 50,000 copies to people who forget it in a month.
100 Right Readers vs. 10,000 Random Ones
This is the conversation I have with every prospect who comes to me wanting a bestseller. Who are the 100 people whose opinion of you would change your business if they read your book? That is your audience. Not the general public. Not “everyone who is interested in leadership.” The specific people whose trust, attention, and action would produce measurable results in your career.
Sometimes those 100 people are potential investors. Sometimes they are conference organizers who book speakers, or decision-makers at companies that hire consultants, or prospective clients in a specific industry niche. The identity of those 100 people determines what the book needs to say, how it needs to say it, and what it needs to make the reader feel.
A book written for “everyone” speaks to nobody in particular. Broad topics at a surface level. Nothing too specific because specificity might narrow the audience. The result is a book that is professionally acceptable and emotionally forgettable. Nobody finishes it and picks up the phone.
A book written for 100 specific people speaks directly to their situation, their challenges, and their decision-making process. Deep where they need depth. Examples they recognize. Expertise demonstrated in the exact area where they need to trust the author. That book makes readers feel like it was written for them, because it was.
What the Right Mindset Looks Like
The clients who get the best results from their books come to me with a different question than “how do I write a bestseller.” They ask “how do I write a book that makes the right people want to work with me?”
That question changes every decision in the process. Topic selection shifts because the book needs to address what the target audience cares about, not what the author wants to talk about. Structure tightens because the book needs to build trust in a specific direction rather than covering everything broadly. Tone sharpens because the book needs to sound like someone the target audience would want in the room, not like a generic expert addressing a generic crowd.
One of my clients came to me wanting to write a comprehensive book about business strategy. Broad topic, broad audience, broad appeal. We narrowed it to a book about the specific challenges of scaling a services business past the $10 million revenue mark. The audience went from “business owners” to “founders of services companies stuck between $5 million and $15 million.” The book sold modestly by bestseller standards. It generated over $30 million in venture capital for the author because every investor who read it recognized the specificity and trusted the expertise behind it.
If we had written the broad book about business strategy, none of that happens. The book is one of ten thousand business strategy books on Amazon. Nobody picks up the phone because nobody feels like the book was written for them.
Why Prospects Leave
When I explain this, some prospects get it immediately. The bestseller goal was a proxy for the real goal, which is career impact, and they are willing to focus on the audience that produces that impact.
Others leave. They find a ghostwriter who promises to help them write a bestseller. The appeal is obvious. “We are going to write a bestseller” sounds exciting and concrete. “We are going to write a book that targets 100 specific decision-makers” does not have the same ring. But glamour and results are different things.
The prospects who leave sometimes come back a year or two later, after the bestseller campaign produced a list appearance and nothing else. No speaking invitations. No client inquiries. No career momentum. The book did what they asked it to do. It hit a list. It just did not do what they actually needed it to do, which was change how the right people thought about them.
I would rather lose the project upfront and be honest about what works than take someone’s money and deliver a book that looks successful on paper but produces nothing in practice.
The Exception
There are legitimate reasons to pursue bestseller status. Public figures whose brand depends on mainstream visibility benefit from a bestseller campaign. Speakers entering the professional circuit sometimes need the “bestselling author” credential for their introduction, giving the list appearance tactical value. Authors whose message is genuinely designed for mass consumption have reason to pursue the broadest possible audience.
But most of the people who come to me wanting a bestseller are business professionals, consultants, executives, and entrepreneurs whose actual goal is to generate business results. For those people, the bestseller mindset is a distraction from the strategy that would actually work.
Write the Book That Works
If you are thinking about writing a book, start with the question that actually matters. Not “how do I write a bestseller” but “who are the 100 people whose opinion of me would change my business, and what does this book need to make them feel?”
The answer to that question is your book. Everything else, the structure, the stories, the tone, the depth, flows from knowing exactly who you are writing for and what you want them to do after they finish.
I have ghostwritten 54+ books. The ones that produced real results were the ones built for a specific audience with a specific goal. Not the ones chasing a list. Start with a conversation about your audience and your goals.
For fiction writers building readership, the same principle applies. A novel that finds its specific audience and serves them well builds a career faster than a novel written to appeal to everyone. My AI-Enhanced Book Promotion Handbook covers how to identify and reach the readers who will actually care about your work.