AI Search Summary
This video explains why it can feel like every author is a New York Times bestselling author, using sampling bias, the availability heuristic, and data about the bestseller list.
- Main question: Why do so many authors claim to be New York Times bestselling authors?
- Short answer / core takeaway: You disproportionately encounter books and authors that succeeded, and marketers often say “by a New York Times bestselling author” even when the specific book you are holding was not itself a bestseller.
- Evidence type: Cognitive-bias explainer plus EPJ Data Science analysis of the New York Times Best Seller list.
- Search topics: New York Times bestseller, sampling bias, availability heuristic, book marketing, author branding, bestseller list statistics.
Common Search Questions
Why does it seem like every book is by a bestselling author?
Sampling bias makes successful books and authors more visible in stores, online, and marketing displays, so your experience is not representative of all published books.
What is the availability heuristic?
It is a cognitive shortcut where examples that come easily to mind feel more common than they really are.
Why do books often say “by a New York Times bestselling author”?
The phrase can refer to the author having had a different book on the list, not necessarily the current book.
How many books make the list?
The video says roughly 100,000 books are published in the U.S. each year, while only around 500 make the New York Times bestseller lists across categories.
Key Takeaways
- Bestseller visibility creates a distorted sample of publishing success.
- “New York Times bestselling author” is often author-level marketing, not book-level evidence.
- Fiction authors with a bestseller may publish many books in a period, with only some making the list.
- Nonfiction bestselling authors are more likely to have one major book and multiple printings.
Transcript
The question
I have a question. How is every author the New York bestselling author?
Let’s talk cognitive science, plus a cool study that analyzed the New York Times bestseller list.
Sampling bias
There are two main cognitive biases at work. Cognitive biases are shortcuts your brain takes when thinking that probably gave you a survival advantage when you didn’t have time to think, but can mislead you in other contexts.
The first is sampling bias. It’s when your brain thinks that what you see is a good representative sample of all the other things like it.
You see a TikTok trend and it seems like it’s doing really well because you see all these videos with crazy views. So you make a new video using the same trend and it completely flops.
It could be that for every thousand videos people make with the trend, only one makes it to the For You page. But you see those.
Bookstore visibility
Now imagine that the TikTok algorithm is like a bookstore display case. Every year there are roughly 100,000 books published in the U.S., but only around 500 make the New York Times bestseller list across all the lists.
But those viral books could easily end up being one in four of the books you see at the bookstore, especially if you don’t go into the back, which you should because it’s way more fun.
Availability heuristic
That brings us to the next bias, called the availability heuristic, where you think something is way more common just because examples of it come easily to mind.
When you made that video, you probably thought about the New York Times bestseller list, which then brought to mind all the books you’ve seen that mention it. But thinking about it doesn’t bring to mind all the many more books you’ve seen in your life that don’t mention the bestseller list.
I bet if you got up and looked at your bookshelf right now, most books would not be New York Times bestsellers.
Marketing language
Which brings us to the final trick that marketers use. Most books that you see mentioning the list aren’t actually bestsellers themselves. They say “by a New York Times bestselling author.”
The initial editions of books obviously can’t mention the fact that they’re bestsellers because they don’t know that yet.
Bestseller-list data
This study analyzed eight years of data from the New York Times bestseller list. They found that fiction authors with a New York Times bestseller typically published around 10 books in that period, with some outliers like James Patterson, who published over 90.
Only roughly half of those 10 make the list. In nonfiction, authors are way more likely to have one book and be done, but probably have multiple printings of it.
There’s a lot more cool statistics in this study, but we can cover them in another video if you guys want.
Additional Notes
Caption context
The caption frames the video as a stitch explaining why there are not as many New York Times bestselling books and authors as it can seem.
Keywords and topics
- New York Times Best Seller list
- Sampling bias
- Availability heuristic
- Book marketing
- Author branding
- Bestseller statistics