TBF Statement
What does it mean to be the BEST at something? Today's TBF looks at a common "best" claim that you have probably seen: the best selling author.
Above is an anonymized LinkedIn profile from someone with the self-claimed title, "5x Bestselling Author". You have probably seen similar claims on books themselves.
True?: This example is most likely true, although it's difficult to verify. Let's assume it is!
Intention? ...to convince you to buy the author's books or services because they are a proven best seller.
False?: The typical "best X" statement hinges on the question of what they are compared against. We need to know the population from which it is best. The claim often sounds wonderful because our initial interpretation is to compare them against ALL examples in the world. In the case of this best selling author, our minds often jump to assuming they are the best among ALL books that are for sale at the time. That's likely not true. Without going too far into the details, our example here has published 6 ebooks and while quantity of sales is not publicly known, there are a combined 250 amazon reviews across all of the books. This person is likely a best seller because they were categorized into a niche topic, compared against only ebooks in that topic, and they might have only been the best seller for one day out of the year.
Back in 2016, someone tested Amazon booksellers to see how easy one can become a "Best Seller". He wrote a one page book and uploaded it to the kindle store to sell for $1. He also self-categorized it into a very obscure category with few books: "Transpersonal Psychology". He sold a total of 3 copies and Amazon tagged him with the coveted "#1 Best Seller" tag. You can read more about it here.
So what to do? Ask for the data to judge how significant the "best" actually is. There might be legitimate best seller lists with real benchmarks that you can lookup, such as the "NYT Best Sellers". The NYT list requires you to sell 5-10k books in one week, and the sales must be geographically distributed, and only then are you compared to other books in your genre.