Bestseller

A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on a list of top-sellers. In everyday usage, the term bestseller is not usually associated with a specified level of sales, or considered of superior academic value or literary quality, it simply implies great popularity, similar to blockbuster for films and chart-topper (or similar) in music (although, in film and music, these measures are generally related to specific sales figures and periods).

Cultural definition

While the basic dictionary definition of bestseller is self-evident, "a popular, top-selling book", the practical cultural definition is somewhat more complex. Because bestsellers are not publicly associated with specific criteria, like, number sold, sales period, sales region, and so forth, a book becomes a bestseller mainly because the "right" source says it is so. A book that becomes a bestseller greatly improves its chances of selling to a much wider audience. Calling a book a "top-selling" title is not as impactful as calling it, for example, "the New York Times bestseller", although the former phrase is assumed to be derived from sales figures, while the latter is first and foremost an opinion from a particular source. In this way, bestseller has taken on its own popular meaning, rather independent of empirical data, by becoming a product category and in effect, a people's choice award. For example, "summer bestseller" signals a book's suitability for millions of lounging "pool-side readers".

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The use of the marketing phrase, underground bestseller further illustrates the independent-from-sales, self-defining aspect of a bestseller. For example, publishing house HarperCollins, in its promotional material for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood : A Novel, referred to it is "from the award-winning author of the underground bestseller Little Altars Everywhere. Ya-Ya went on to achieve bestseller status in the 1990s. In a review for the 2002 film of the same name, one reviewer refers to it as the "film version of the...Rebecca Wells bestseller".

Related Topics:
HarperCollins - 2002 - Rebecca Wells

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