the.com/bestseller
A book that sold like crazy, often before anyone bothered to read it.
means A book (or other product) that sells in unusually large numbers, especially one ranked near the top of sales lists for a given period.
from A transparent compound of 'best' + 'seller,' meaning quite literally the thing that sells best. It's an Americanism, taking shape in the late 19th century as publishing became big business and newspapers began tracking which books moved fastest; the term hardened into a marketing badge once formal 'bestseller lists' (most famously The Bookman's in the 1890s, later The New York Times') turned weekly sales into a public scoreboard.
- gamed lists
- Authors bulk-buy own books to crack the rankings
- all-time king
- Don Quixote leads at 500 million copies
- list politics
- NYT calls its chart editorial, not arithmetic
- speed records
- Harry Potter book seven moved 11 million in a day
da vinci code — dan brown's 2003 novel sold over 80 million copies worldwide
think and grow rich — napoleon hill's 1937 self-help book has sold over 100 million copies