Why Bestseller Status is Overrated for Your Book as a Business Asset
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This episode focuses on Amazon bestseller status particularly focusing on its relevance for coaches, consultants, and service providers. When marketing for authors, bestseller status should align with individual goals and the overall strategy of using a book to attract clients and generate leads. The conversation explores the realities of achieving Amazon bestseller status, the importance of building relationships with readers, and the need to focus on generating income through products and services tied to the book rather than solely on book sales. Ashley invites listeners to consider the long-term impact of their work.
TAKEAWAYS
Why bestseller status should not be your only or main goal
Why focusing on using your book to attract clients is a better use of your time
How the income potential from your book is more impactful than just bestseller status
Why Amazon Bestseller status makes it harder to building relationships with readers
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction to Bestseller Status
02:42 The Overrated Nature of Bestseller Status
05:53 Understanding Amazon Bestseller Status
08:40 The Importance of Goals in Publishing
11:49 Building Relationships Over Status
14:21 Realistic Expectations for Authors
17:01 Legacy and Impact Beyond Sales
22:59 Conclusion and Invitation to Profitable Publishing Live
Watch the video from the episode instead of just listening.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
→ Profitable Publishing™ LIVE 2 Day Intensive (Feb 12th and 13th, 2026): Learn how to write, publish, and market a book that packages your expertise into a client attracting resource www.ProfitableSelfPublishing.com/Live (Use code PODCAST at checkout for a special discount).
→ Publisher Rocket: Find out how many books needed to reach best seller status https://publisherrocket.cartknox.com/buy-rocket?aff=240 (affiliate link)
→ Profitable Publishing™ with Preorders: www.PreorderProfits.com/Book
RAW TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Profitable Publishing. I'm your host Ashley and this is the space for coaches, consultants, speakers, and service providers to turn your expertise into a profitable book. Today we are talking about something that you have probably heard about whether or not you have a book or don't have one just yet and it is bestseller status. Now before we get started, I'm just gonna let you know my approach to bestseller status is different than what you may have heard from other outlets, so just gonna keep it 100 with you, that I have a bit of a spicy take on it. And so just, you've been warned. There's a reason why I have this approach. And so, if you haven't already listened to episode two, I do recommend that you go back and listen to that, because that really sets the groundwork for this episode.
And I say that because the approach of profitable publishing is to use your book to attract your clients, to use it for speaking workshops, to add as a multiplier for your income, to use it for bulk book orders, also to support your customers and future customers with your programs, your membership, and your consulting. And so if you haven't listened to episode two, go back and listen to that, because that is integral into understanding this method for today.
Now, I'm gonna just go ahead and say it. Bestseller status is overrated. Now, bear with me. I have a point, as I mentioned. And so, when you think about bestseller status, there are lots of people that might say, okay, yeah, that's the main goal. That's really what you should be trying to do. And in all honesty, this really depends on you, it depends on your book, and it depends on your actual goals. So just because you're an author doesn't mean that you really have to aim for bestseller status.
If that's not something that makes sense for your overall picture. And when I am thinking about the clients that I work with, they are coaches, consultants, speakers, service providers. And so you are an author, but you're kind of putting on your author hat, which is how one of my colleagues kind of describes it. You're putting on your author hat to share your expertise, to be able to support your clients, and to be able to show that you know your stuff so that people will be like, well, yeah, I want to hire her because she knows what she's talking about.
And so your approach is slightly different. You are likely not a full-time author. You likely are building a business at the same time. You probably also have a nine to five. And so your approach to all things in the author industry are gonna be slightly different than the straight up author advice for someone who's full-time or someone who's maybe traditionally published, meaning that they got a book deal And so we're gonna be focusing on bestseller status through Amazon because that's typically the platform that most independently published authors are using. And it's something that most authors in general are using because most authors are not the bigger name folks that we kind of know. And so I'm someone who has achieved it through multiple books. So I'm not saying that it's all bad, but there definitely needs to be some considerations to think about before you kind of go all in to focusing on bestseller status.
And so once again, we're not talking about New York Times, Seller Status, or Wall Street Journal. That's a totally different ball game, and that has a totally different methodology to get there, which in some circles is debated if that's even a valid way to calculate it, but that's another story for another day. focusing on Amazon Best Seller Status, is that the right choice for you? Now, it can be helpful when you are trying to build a buzz online.
People who are not authors typically do get really excited when you've posted like, hey, I just got bestseller status in XYZ. So for example, my first book ⁓ was a book for first time moms and so it got bestseller status in ⁓ motherhood or pregnancy, something. I don't remember the category because it's not something I focus on, but it got bestseller status in that. And then my Daniel Fast book is perpetually a bestseller at different times of the year. Because as I'm gonna mention, bestseller status changes. It used to change every hour on Amazon. However, more recently within the last year or so, they've actually adjusted it where they're only going to update it every couple hours or every like 12 hours. So instead of having a new bestseller every hour, they're adjusting it about twice a day. So that can be more beneficial because then it has a different standing because instead of having to just maintain that status for an hour, now you're having to maintain it for a longer time period, which obviously looks better because you are able to do it for, once again, a longer time period. though it has changed, it's still something that is fleeting because you could be a bestseller status, you could have bestseller status on Amazon today, and it could be gone by lunchtime, or you could have it tonight, and it could be gone by the time you wake up in the morning.
So something that's fleeting, which also is why I am hesitant to put a lot of energy into it is something that changes consistently. People are consistently publishing books and people are consistently having launches. About four million books are published each year. And so every time a new book is published, then it's recalibrating the system, if it's in your genre, it's recalibrating the system, readjusting, and then you're having to fight again for your status.
And I like to think of it as, well, when people buy books, they're typically not buying one book at a time. They typically are buying multiple books. I'm the one who reads multiple books at a time. But then also I think of it like food. Like people are not just buying fruit. They're also buying meat. They're also buying grains. So even though you are kind of ranked in, not kind of, even though you're ranked in the bestseller status, that doesn't mean that somebody also is not buying other things simultaneously. So that's also a reason why I kind of take it with a grain of salt.
And then additionally, different categories have different measures for bestseller status. So there are actually tools you can use and I can link them in the show notes. Publish Your Rocket is one example. It'll actually show you, you need to sell this many copies in order to get the top 10, to get top 10 bestseller status in this category. Then another category, you might have to sell 400 books to get top 10. And so it's not an even metric because it depends on how many books are even in that category, how many books have been released that day, that week, that month. It just is something that's a moving target. And so I typically don't recommend that authors or people who write books, that they focus on that as a goal long-term. Short-term, yes, okay, we can knock that out, that makes sense. But long-term, I typically recommend that you focus on using your book to generate leads, generate clients to attract people to your products and services because at the end of the day, what is really your goal with bus seller status? Is it that you want to sell a lot of books to say that you've sold a lot of books? Is it that you want the income from the books? And when we think about that, the income from the books, if you're selling it on Amazon or even sites that IngramSpark distributes to, you're typically making less than $5 a book. So if your goal is the income from the books, then it just makes more sense to sell something that's tied to the book, such as a coaching program or a course or something of that sort, because that's gonna give you that income a lot faster than trying to sell a $20 book. Now, I'm not saying don't sell the $20 book, obviously sell the book, because your book is working as a lead magnet in this case, but if income is your goal, there are more efficient ways to get that income, and if your goal is to sell a lot of books, then that's fine. However, what is the rationale for that? Is it because you want to kind of cash your net and get as many leads as possible? Okay, cool, that works too. But really think about what is your goal and does it align with bestseller status? And is the time and energy that you're going to need to put your book in a place where you're consistently getting that bestseller status, is that the best use of your time? Because we also have to think about when people are buying your book on Amazon, you are not getting that customer data, so you have no idea who is buying your book, whatsoever, you have no idea who it is. You don't have any information about them. You don't have a way to communicate with them because Amazon doesn't release that data to you because the person purchased the book from them and then they printed the book for them. So you have no connection with that person. Now there are ways that you can work around this such as, let me say ethical ways to work around this. You can provide things inside of your book that they can see, so such as a lead magnet, a QR code to come on over to your website, to get on your email list, something free that accompanies the book, those are fine. However, everybody who buys the book is not going to do that step. So you're missing out on a very large chunk of people who you don't have access to because you may have been so focused on getting those book sales on Amazon versus also having sales on your site. And so you wanna consider if you're going to focus on bestseller status, is it aligning with your goals? Is it something that's going to help you to actually get what you want out of the book? And does that fit with your business? Because if you are writing a book to generate those leads, to attract those clients for book book orders, you might have people who are purchasing the book directly from you. You should have people that are directly purchasing the book from you, especially when it comes to book orders, because they might want to buy hundreds of copies of the book or thousands of copies of the book. And at that point, you might want to go to a printer, but you are able to build that relationship with them if they are purchasing directly from you. You're able to know who they are. You can check in with them. You can ask them questions, all of course with their permission because they've opted into your email service provider or your text message list. And you have more leeway, more flexibility with what you can do for future books. So being able to actually ask them like, what were your thoughts on this book? How did you like it? Do you think might be different or helpful in the future? It's just a totally different ballgame when you are in control of the information of who's actually purchasing your book and being able to reach out to them and invite them to different things that you might have that are surrounding the book. And so you really just want to think about, okay, am I really focused on the glitz and the glam of, I got best seller status on this? Are you focused on accolades or are you focused on the profit and focused on the relationships that you can be building with these people? As I mentioned earlier, it should be aligned with generating those clients, generating those leads, boosting your income. When you think about book sales on Amazon, you're typically only getting less than $5 a book depending upon what book it is.
When you sell on your website, you can sell it for more. You can also add on additional items to the book, such as doing a book bundle, which is something I mentioned in Profitable Publishing with Pre-Orders. And I'll put a link for that in the show notes as well. But you have different options of what you can add onto it. You don't have those options when selling on Amazon. And so you have to think about the trade-off of, if I'm going to focus on trying to get bestseller status on Amazon, then I'm sacrificing something on my site. I'm sacrificing that relationship.
As I mentioned, I'm sacrificing that ability to connect to my person, to increase the amount of income that I might make from this sale because I don't even know who they are, so I can't follow up with them in a traditional sense. Of course, if you've included that lead magnet or other measure to connect with them, then that's an option as well. And so when you are focusing on your goals for your book, it's important to really think about are you doing this for you or are you doing this because you want to kind of show off or you want to kind of, how can I say this? You want to kind of feel like a big timer. And that's natural to want to feel like, hey, I want to get those accolades, but really consider in the long term what makes sense to focus on it. Maybe you think about, okay, for my launch, I really want to try to get this bestseller status for this time period. And then after that, I'm good with funneling people to my site if they still purchase on Amazon. That's fine, but to me, think about where you're investing your energy because all of that matters when you are trying to run a business, when you're trying to possibly work a nine to five and things of that sort.
So in my book, Profitable Publishing with Pre-Orders, on page 71, I share a common question that people have when using my pre-order profits plan, and it's what about Amazon bestseller status? Now, in this case, this is something people worry about if they don't have their pre-order on Amazon, how can they still get that status? And so even if you are doing it off of Amazon, you're doing your pre-order on your site, you can still get bestseller status.
But then also I speak to the fact that being a bestseller on Amazon could mean that you've sold just one or two books, or it can mean that you've sold 10,000 books. It really depends on your genre. It depends on how many people are releasing at that time. And it doesn't also automatically increase your sales. So you could be a bestseller, but that doesn't always mean that Amazon's just gonna automatically start sending people to your ⁓ books listing. So one thing that Amazon likes to see, is that they are seeing that you're getting consistent sales, not just like a huge influx at the beginning when your book comes out and then like nothing. They like to see that there's some steady sales coming in, but further actually gonna start recommending you to folks because that shows longevity, that shows that it's not just like a fluke, it shows you didn't just send like all of your family to go buy the book. And so. ⁓
That is one of the reasons why people do tend to want to try to aim for best seller status is to get that consistent stream of push from Amazon. And I'm all for that. But just remember that you want that to happen throughout. You don't want it to be just like, okay, started my launch and then fell off the face of the earth. And then another thing to consider when you are thinking about your goal of best seller status is, okay, is it realistic for me to be able to try to reach that. So if you haven't listened to the previous episode, I encourage you to go back and listen to that because I actually interviewed author Kendra Pecci, and ⁓ episode five, and so with her, we were talking about how she didn't feel like it was realistic for her to try to get bestseller status because of her genre. So she's in a category with Stephen King.
And so to her, she was like, it's just unfathomable for me and beyond comprehension for me to try to get best seller status. So instead I'm really gonna focus on my profit. And so she grabbed a copy of my book, or I'm sorry, she won a copy of my book during my four day pre-order profits challenge. And with her, she said, okay, I'm really gonna focus on generating these sales on my site. And she was able to make $4,000 in pre-orders and also sell over 300 copies within her first four weeks as an author. So if you haven't checked out that episode, definitely go back and listen. But for her, she still saw that as successful. So she still saw it as, I still made the income I wanted to make. I still was able to cover my book tour because she hosted a multi-city book tour and her income from her book was able to cover her flights to get back and forth. And...it was just something where she still felt confident and she still felt like she had accomplished her goal even though she didn't really worry about bestseller status on Amazon. And so that's what I mean when I say you have to think about your goals, not a goal that someone else might feel like they're kind of not intentionally, but might feel like they want it for you when you may or may not even want that for yourself. And so another goal you might have or another unintentional thing that actually has happened to me that I didn't really have as a goal, but that's actually really is the idea that people will actually start quoting you to you. So this has happened a couple times to me in the last year. And so for example, when I think about the way that I wanted to set my book up, I wanted it to be something people could come back to again and again. I want my most recent, or no, I'm sorry, my most recent book, profitable publishing of pre-orders, but the way that I want my books to be set up is I want people to be able to refer to it again and again. I want them to find it valuable even if they never purchase a product from me or service with me. I wanted it to be something where they can use actionable tips and strategies. And so I've had people come up to me and say, I literally have your book within arm's reach whenever I'm doing my work on my books because it's just that good.
And I've had two people say to me, like, this is my pre-order Bible and not to be sacrilegious, but just like, this is what I use as like the blueprint for my pre-orders. And like to me, that's just like, like a tearjerker. Like a tearjerker moment, cause I'm like, I've put my blood, sweat and tears. No blood. I did put my like sweat equity into it. And I'm just thankful that it's had the ⁓ impact that it has had, but that's just something that is totally outside of bestseller status that I hadn't even thought was something that I would find exciting, but it is exciting because I wasn't even thinking that was something that was a possibility. That was just outside of the scope of what my mind was even thinking about when I was making my books. And so another thing to consider is the things that are seemingly a little less tangible or a little less trackable.
And so, for example, when I have a VIP day with a client, I can use that same book to refer to them when they have certain questions, or I might tell them, okay, you need to read these pages before we actually meet. And honestly, that just feels like a boss move. And it might be because I have a background in education, and I just think about the years I spent in school, where you're buying these textbooks that change every year, and then you gotta buy the new edition, and yada yada, and you're referring to this theory and these principles and it's like you have something that now people can refer to for you and they are flipping through your work saying, yeah, on this page you said X, Y, Z. And that's just like, y'all know that emoji that's like the brain explosion at the top? That's just like a brain explosion moment for me because obviously as a creator, you make all this content, you make all these things and people have quoted my content back to me. Shout out to Kim Stewart from Book Marketing Mania. Her podcast is great for helping you to get on podcasts, so definitely check her out. But she ⁓ quoted one of my social media quotes to me one time and she said she had it written down and she has it up in her office. so things like that and also being able to refer to yourself when you're working with clients, it just to me, it just taps into a part of you that just is like legacy. Like when you're able to leave that type of lasting impact on someone from something you've written, to me that's just like, chef's kiss. Like that's just amazing. ⁓ and so with that, that's, that's kind of a, an intangible metric that's beyond just kind of like the glitz and glam of bestseller status.
So maybe you are thinking, okay Ashley, you told me what not to focus on with best seller status, what should I focus on? So, most authors focus on page reads, books sold on Amazon, and best seller status. I want you to focus on your calls that are booked, so when you are tying your book to your services and to your products. If you're using sales calls, you want to focus on how many calls are booked from your book and on your intake form you might have either a check box or something for them to see, okay, well actually this is how I found you. So either YouTube or LinkedIn or from your book. That way you have a very clear picture of this is how many people are coming to me from this source. Then you also can check downloads of your lead magnet. So if you have inserted a way for them to grab that lead magnet from your book, then you can actually track and see, okay, well, I have this many downloads this month. And then I can tell, okay, these came from the book. Now, in order for this to be effective, you would have to make it so that you don't have that same lead magnet somewhere else, or you might have to duplicate it, which hopefully I'm not speaking over your head, but you might have to duplicate the opt-in page or the opt-in form, and then have it be where that, just that one is tied to your book. And maybe you have it in existence somewhere else. So you might have...the same lead magnet with different opt-in pages so that way you can see. And your CRM would be able to kind of track that. ⁓ Or your landing page site, whatever you're using. Then ⁓ if you don't use cell calls, you can use DMs as a metric. And so you can see, okay, after my release or whatever this time period where I promoted my book, I got 10 DMs about...XYZ so maybe you've inserted something in your book that says like if you need more help with a strategy shoot me a DM on Instagram and you can discuss or Maybe at the end of the book you have a call to action for them to reach out to you Whatever way that you are attracting those folks to be able to kind of get into your sphere of influence or into your funnel into your processes that's what you want to track and see and tie that to your book then you also look at the both a quantity and the quality of the reviews and the feedback that you're getting. Now, one thing that is kind of notorious in the author space is that getting people to leave reviews can be kind of challenging. And so when you do get the reviews, then you want to look and see the quality of them. So what is it that people are saying? What kind of things are common that people are saying? What kind of things are consistent that they're saying, whether it's good or bad? And then you want look and see where that kind of falls into things.
And then the last thing, you want to think about the impact and the effect that you've made on the person. So what is it that they're telling you that they actually are getting from your book?
And so if you're someone who wants to be able to do these types of things with your book, you're someone who wants to be able to create a book that people come back to again and again, that is able to sell on Amazon with or without bestseller status, while also helping you generate a profit and attract your customers, then I want to invite you to Profitable Publishing Live. And it's a two day event that is happening February 12th and 13th.
And if you catch this after recording, then I do have a one-on-one version of this, but it is essentially in time group coaching to be able to get your work done in the sense of I will be working directly with you, looking over your shoulder virtually if you're attending virtually or in person if you're in person. And it's a space to be able to understand how to write, publish, and launch a profitable book that packages your expertise so that you can attract those clients and also generate those sales. And so you can actually get a special discount with the code podcast. And that will be $200 off of the general ticket. If you're attending virtually, or if you're coming in person and you get VIP, then you will get 1100 off. So that code again is podcast. So you can add that in at checkout because I just wanted to give something a little special to podcast listeners. And so today's episode was really to focus on shifting the narrative of thinking that you have to only focus on bestseller status or that it's the most important metric. And so I want to, I just wanted to plant the seed and help you to kind of make that shift and kind of start opening your eyes and thinking about how your book is really a tool as opposed to just something that can make you feel as if you have to be locked into the way that authors do what they you are someone who has a business, you might be working a nine to five, and then also you're adding author on top of that. And you have to think about how some people are just doing two of those things, which there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying that to diminish, but some people are just doing two of those things as opposed to you might be doing three or four things. And so when that happens, you are maybe not gonna be able to follow the same blueprint that someone who is just focusing on being an author is gonna follow, and that's okay. So don't feel like every piece of author advice is tailored to you because you are someone who's got author as one of your commas. So maybe you're a service provider, author, speaker, or maybe you're a coach, consultant, author. And so you have to really be mindful of the information and the advice that you take to heart because it's not always tailored to you and it could really lead you in a path that really isn't gonna get you the results that you wanna see. So I hope this episode has been helpful and until next time, stay profitable.
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