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Pyrate Jenni ([info]pyratejenni) wrote in [info]fandom_wank,
@ 2010-03-03 13:32:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:author entitlement, authors, writers are often pompous douches

Why fan -- er, pro authors can't have nice things.
Rob Thurman is an urban fantasy author who desperately wants to get the 6th book in her series on the NY Times bestseller list. According to a wee mousie, the way bestsellers are calculated is by applying a complex and seekrit algorithm to the first week's sales, from Tuesday (when new books, like albums and babies, "drop") to Saturday. So it's very important to rack up sales during that time period if you want to list.

Also according to the mousie, Thurman's been going nuts for the past month, posting in all caps, and topping things off with this post. Thurman berates a reader for buying the book on Monday because said reader is having surgery on Tuesday. The reader apologizes, Thurman says she'll need pictures of the surgery.

Thurman's specialness doesn't end there. Non-USA readers have to buy two copies of the book to get their reward (sneak peek at the 7th books), people who buy online are Ebil! and more CAPSlock.

Her tweets are also... yeah.

Hat tip to the mouse, for stealing borrowing chunks of her post.



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[info]bobafeis
2010-03-04 07:17 am UTC (link)
From someone who used to be on the publishing side:

It seems like they're trying to make a push to get her on the list, because it's a great publicity tool, and honestly, if she's six books into a series, she should hopefully have a pretty large readership. They may be trying to make her a bigger name in the genre and a place on the NYT list helps that.

Or maybe she's in danger of being dropped because her numbers are low and she's organizing this push herself. Maybe someone mentioned to her that it would be great if this book made the list. I really have no idea, but I've never seen someone dropped from a major house because they didn't make the NYT list, of all things. The numbers publishers care about are Bookscan numbers, the internal numbers from Amazon, B&N, Borders, etc, the USA today list on some occasions, and once the books are returned, their own numbers. NYT is for publicity and bragging rights, not actual financial decisions.

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