best-seller
There's really no publisher manipulation. It just doesn't work that way. It would be really nice if a publisher could turn a novel of their choosing into a best-seller. That would mean they wouldn't lose money on four out of five first novels they publish.
Best-sellers are novels that sell a certain number of copies in a certain amount of time from selected locations around the country, and pre-publication orders count onto this total, which means a novel can debut at number one.
Publisher try to push a promising novel by pouring publicity dollars and advertising behind it. Sometimes this works, and we hear about those, but what we usually fail to hear about is all this times this fails, and it's pretty often.
When a publisher puts money behind a novel it's almost always because that novel is already selling very well, and is already sailing toward best-seller status. Pubolicity just makes it happen a little sooner.
The numbers it takes to make a best-seller vary week by week, simply because it's the top sellers in the given time period and from the slected locations that hit the list. This means that what it takes to hit the list is determined by how many people buy books during that week.
I can remember when 50,000 copies would put you fairly high on the list, and now it usually takes millions to hit the top. Being number ten on the New York Times list means far more sales now than being number one did not many years ago.
Publishers, and those who run the lists, are frequently more suprised than anyone by the titles that make the list. You know a book by King or Clancy or Roberts will surely be high on the list, and sometimes a publisher has enough faith in a novel, "The Da Vinci Code" comes to mind, to give it a much bigger push than usual, and it works, but there are always surprises. At least as often as not, when a publisher gives a novel a push, they lose their money.
First novels that become best-sellers are almost always surprises. King's "Carrie," Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October," were given tiny advances and no pubicity, but started selling like mad.
What places famous writers on the best-seller list is having been there before. Millions read their books and love them, and expect to read and love the next, and usually do. If they don't, even famous writers fall off the list. Robert James Waller comes to mind here. "The Bridges of Madison County" set records for how long it was on the list, and went to number one three times. But the public liked each of his next novels less and less, and sales plummeted. Where is he now?
With first novels, with unknown writers, it's almost always word of mouth that turns a novel into a best-seller. A few people read it, they love it, they tell their friends, and they love it and tell their friends. Sales numbers jump way up, and then, and only then, does the publisher pour money into publicity.
In truth, there's very little a publisher can do to make a novel a best-seller, and even in the rare case when they can, if they're wrong about quality, the public won't buy the next book by that writer.
Publishers are wrong an amazing percentage of the time, and whether or not a novel will reach the best-seller list is always a guesstimate.
The reading public makes a best-seller, and they do it by word of mouth. Why the reading public chooses to buy a particular book in such huge numbers is something that's almost completely mysterious. Publishers don't know why, agents don't know why, and even readers seldom know why. If they did, the buying process would be a heck of a lot easier, and an editor would always know which novels to buy and which to reject.
But believe me, publishers have very little impact on whether or not a novel becomes a best-seller. I've been there and I know. If a publisher could make a novel a best-seller, every book published would sell a million copies.
As a publisher, you go by experience, and guess the best you can, and pour money behind this book or that, and sometimes you get it right. Just as often, you get it completely wrong, and a novel you expected to get five or ten thousand sales tops suddenly takes off and sells so fast you can't print them fast enough. Meanwhile, a novel you poured half a million dollars of publicty into sits on the shelves and doesn't sell at all, leaving you with a couple of hundred thousand copies that you can't even give away.
As a writer, I do think it's wise to read the best-seller list, but I don't think it's wise to try and tailor a novel in an attempt to hit the best-seller list. Wreiters who get there seem to be writers who simply write the best way they can, tell the best story they can, and most important, who write novels they love.