Some books are pushed onto bestseller lists by bulk purchases. If you're writing non-fiction pushing a viewpoint that People or Organizations With Money want pushed, your book can end up on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list even if nobody is actually interested in reading it.
There was also a Twitter-thread recently showing that the biggest correlation between book and bestseller status was publisher investment, which makes sense - and again, you can't control that.
That certainly does make sense. Advertising is annoying and a lot of it is stupid, but sending the message "This nice thing that you didn't know about before exists" has to be done some way before people will buy something new.
Some books are pushed onto bestseller lists by bulk purchases. If you're writing non-fiction pushing a viewpoint that People or Organizations With Money want pushed, your book can end up on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list even if nobody is actually interested in reading it.
There was also a Twitter-thread recently showing that the biggest correlation between book and bestseller status was publisher investment, which makes sense - and again, you can't control that.
That certainly does make sense. Advertising is annoying and a lot of it is stupid, but sending the message "This nice thing that you didn't know about before exists" has to be done some way before people will buy something new.