What I Learned Researching Bestseller Lists . . .

In preparation for Book Deal Bootcamp, my intensive that teaches entrepreneurs and experts how to get traditionally published, I dug into the bestseller lists.

Specifically The New York Times bestseller list, the USA Today bestseller list, and Amazon’s lists of top sellers and most read books.

What I found there surprised me, though in retrospect I shouldn’t have been all that surprised.

The lists of how-to bestsellers? Are currently all white guys, or close to it.

James Clear. Mark Manson. Bessel Van Der Kolk. Peter Attia. Adam Grant.

(Our client Vivian Tu shook the list up a little bit in mid-January with her book, Rich AF.)

The fact that the bestseller lists have been dominated — for YEARS — by white, cis, straight men is a real problem, and not because I’m against white guys succeeding.

(My husband is a white guy. My brother is a white guy. My dad is a white guy. I could go on.)

What this domination signals to me is that women and folx of color aren’t getting the same visibility, initial promotion, sales momentum, and word-of-mouth that these dudes are getting.

And that’s a problem because readers need diverse books.