It seems everyone is a bestseller these days. Every time I turn around, yet another author has added a large banner proclaiming herself ‘best seller author!’ on her website. I admit to a minor twinge of jealousy (slight understatement) whenever I see the words ‘bestselling author’. In fact, I may become a stalker at that point and go onto Amazon and check the rankings of all the bestselling author’s books. I’m not going to confirm or deny my stalkerish behavior, but I will say this. Whenever I do just happen to take a glimpse at the rankings of a so-called (OMG! Don’t you love that phrase?) bestselling author’s books, they are almost never actually in the top hundred – often these books don’t even make the top thousand. What’s going on?

Being the obsessive person I am, I decided to research the situation. The first blog I read claimed you…