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. Most people who come in with a book say the same thing first: I want to sell a million copies. That’s never the goal.
That’s not what most people want to hear from the person they’re about to hire. They want enthusiasm, a plan, and a promise. What I give them is the truth. Sell 50,000 copies over the next ten years, and by my rough take you’re doing better than 99.9% of the authors out there.
Chasing a bestseller is the wrong mindset for almost every business author. The authors who chase it usually end up with a book that underperforms on every metric that matters. For more, see what really makes a book valuable.
Across 54+ ghostwriting projects, some of the books became bestsellers.
Chasing a bestseller is the wrong mindset for almost every business author.
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.
Why Is Bestseller the Wrong Goal?
If you’re thinking about writing a book, start with the question that matters.Share on X
When someone says they want a bestseller, what they usually mean is they want validation.
The credibility of saying “I wrote a bestseller.” The bragging rights at conferences. The assumption that a bestselling book and a successful book are the same thing. For more, see don’t make these 8 mistakes when writing a bestseller and stop chasing bestseller lists.
A bestseller list counts copies sold in a compressed timeframe, and you can hit one by selling a few thousand copies through bulk purchases, launch campaigns, or coordinated buying. The list appearance is real and it’s hollow, and I think the outfits selling these campaigns to first-time authors are charging for a badge the author can’t spend on anything. A lot of the spots on the big lists can be bought or gamed. It’s a well-known scandal.
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 keep generating speaking invitations, consulting contracts, client inquiries, and credibility that grows for years. I had a bestseller of my own, and I promoted the hell out of it. You can only keep that up for so long when you’re doing it all manually. Once I stopped pushing, the sales fell away.
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.
A book that sells 500 copies to exactly the right 500 people can generate more career value than one that sells 50,000. Those 50,000 forget it in a month.
A small, specific audience produces more career value than a big list number.
Are 100 Right Readers Worth More Than 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’s your audience: the specific people whose trust, attention, and action would produce measurable results in your career. The general public and “everyone who’s interested in leadership” don’t make the list, and a prospect who can’t name anybody specific isn’t ready to write the book yet.
Sometimes those 100 people are potential investors. Sometimes they’re conference organizers who book speakers, or decision-makers at companies that hire consultants, or prospective clients in one 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’s 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 showed 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.
| Aspect | Bestseller goal | Right-readers goal |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Copies sold in a compressed timeframe. | Trust and action from specific people. |
| Audience | Everyone, or nobody in particular. | The 100 people whose opinion would change your business. |
| Content | Broad topics at a surface level. | Depth where readers need it, with examples they recognize. |
| Typical result | A list appearance, then it disappears within weeks. | Speaking invitations, consulting contracts and client inquiries. |
| Over time | Sales fall away once the pushing stops. | Credibility that keeps growing for years. |
| Reader reaction | Nobody finishes it and picks up the phone. | Readers feel it was written for them. |
What is the right goal for a business book?
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. Structure tightens because the book needs to build trust in a specific direction instead of covering everything broadly. Tone sharpens because the book needs to sound like someone the target audience would want in the room.
One of my clients came to me wanting to write a complete book about business strategy. Broad topic, broad audience, broad appeal. We narrowed it to a book about the 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 did exactly what the author needed, because every reader in that niche recognized the specificity and trusted the expertise behind it.
If we’d 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 do prospects leave before hiring you?
From the podcast
Jeff Hassemer, thirty years in marketing technology, names the specific error that costs you the reader you were trying to win, on Leaders and Their Stories:
People use sales language in their marketing, and it erodes trust faster than anything.Chasing a bestseller ranking is sales language pointed at your own book, and readers can hear it.
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’re 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’re going to write a bestseller” sounds exciting and concrete, and “We’re going to write a book that targets 100 specific decision-makers” doesn’t have the same ring. The first promise is more glamorous, and the second is the one that produces results.
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 never changed how the right people thought about them, and that was the point.
I get angry at whoever sold them that campaign, because they paid for a year of work and came away with a screenshot. I’d 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 designed for mass consumption have reason to pursue the broadest possible audience. Those reasons hold up. Wanting the badge because a competitor put “bestselling author” in his email signature doesn’t, and I’d tell any client who admits that’s the real motive to keep the money.
The book on this: Make a Living as a Self-Published Author is 302 pages on the business behind the book, the half of the job nobody warns a first-time author about.
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 work.
Write the Book That Works
If you’re thinking about writing a book, start with the question that matters: who are the 100 people whose opinion of you would change your 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’re writing for and what you want them to do after they finish.
I have ghostwritten 54+ books, and the ones that produced real results targeted a specific audience with a specific goal. A year of work aimed at a list is a mistake every time, because the handful of readers who could have changed their business never feel the author wrote the book for them. Start with a conversation about your audience and your goals.
For fiction writers building readership, the same principle applies. A novel that finds its 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 care about your work.
My take
Forget the list and aim the book at 100 people. Pick the readers whose opinion of you would change your business, and write for what they need to feel. A bestseller chased for its own sake misses all of them, because the handful who mattered never feel the book was written for them. The speaking invitations and consulting contracts come from that small audience. Novelists can use the same rule. Serve the readers who’ll love your book, and the career follows.
Book Mindset FAQ
Anybody can publish now, so a published book isn’t the achievement it once was. Make a Living as a Self-Published Author covers what to build in its place, a business behind the books.
- Business Book ROI Study, Gotham Ghostwriters
- Here’s how the NYT crafts bestseller lists, and how authors try to game them, NPR (Planet Money)
