How to make a BOOK into a bestseller
5/2/202647 min
In the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how does a book actually end up there? There is, of course, a playbook that publishers and authors use to try to gin up enough sales at the beginning of a new book’s life to launch it onto the list. But there is also a world of more shadowy techniques – a whole history of hacking shenanigans going back nearly a century.
Today on the show, the fourth episode in our series: Planet Money sets out to make the Planet Money book a best seller, and along the way, we uncover all the outlandish strategies that people have tried to hack their way onto the New York Times Best Seller List. There will be mass hallucinations, legal exorcisms, shady book launderers, and scarlet daggers. And we learn the hard way how trying to engineer your way onto the list, just might be the thing that keeps you from getting there.
Related:
- “Night People's Hoax On Day People Makes Hit With Book Folks”
- New York Times: “Jacqueline Susann Dead at 53; Novelist Wrote 'Valley of Dolls'”
- New York Times: “Blatty Sue Times On Best-Seller List”
- New York Times: “Court Bars A Suit Over Books List”
- Bloomberg Businessweek: “Did Dirty Tricks Create A Best Seller?”
- Episode 1: Inside a BOOK auction
- Episode 2: Our BOOK vs. the global supply chain
- Episode 3: BOOKstore Economics
- Series: Planet Money makes a book
- Laura McGrath’s new book: Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction
Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life is in stores now.
Support: Planet Money+
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This episode was produced by Willa Rubin. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
Music: NPR Source Audio - "Quirky Episodes," “Dramedy Scheme,” "Unforeseen Consequences,” and “Impractical Jokes.”
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
Support comes from our 2026 lead sponsor of Planet Money, Amazon Business. Free your team from time-consuming procurement tasks. Discover smart business buying, where unmatched selection meets AI-driven tools to simplify complex processes. Learn more at amazonbusiness.com.
Speaker 1· Soundbite0:17
This is Planet Money from NPR.
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi· Host0:21
If somehow, given everything that's going on in the world these days, you missed it, let me be the first to tell you, Planet Money just published its first ever book. It was the culmination of years of work. We navigated the world of agents and editors and auctions, figured out how to manufacture a book during a trade war and get it to stores around the world from airports to cruise ships. And throughout that process, my boss's boss, my grand-boss, Alex Goldmark, he and everyone else involved in the book had harbored this secret fantasy that if we played our cards right, maybe someday this book could reach the holy grail of commercial publishing. Maybe this book could make The New York Times bestseller list. So it was carrying all those dreams from my grand-boss that I recently walked into the office of Planet Money's book editor, Tom Mayer, at the publishing house W. W. Norton in New York. I was there about a week after the book launched to witness the moment of truth.
Tom Mayer· Guest1:22
Today is a big day. Today is the day when the bestseller lists are released.
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi· Host1:28
That's kind of as big as it gets,