A fascinating explanation of how Mars Hill pushed Driscoll’s book to the top of the NYT Best-Seller list.
By tracking the Amazon sales rank of Real Marriage, we can actually see the effects of the bestseller listing. Using archives of Amazon’s Real Marriage page, I tracked the book’s overall Amazon sales rank over the first six months after it was officially published (Jan 3, 2012). Given Amazon’s massive market share of books sold in the United States, it’s a good analog for overall sales in all retail outlets.
The book starts at #5, driven mainly by the pent-up orders that had been arranged by Result Source, though starts to fall precipitously in the first week. On Day 6, it is ranked 84, though recovers to #53 on Day 11. Not coincidentally, the Times published the previous week’s rankings on its website on Day 10 (Jan 13) on which Real Marriage is #1 on the Hardcover Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list. The buzz from that designation drew attention and sales to the book, bringing its ranking back up. (One remarkable aspect of the listing is that Result Source so effectively masked the sales effort that the book doesn’t earn the dagger symbol, as we’ve seen on some of Furtick’s books, to warn us that the result might be from bulk sales.)
Also, don’t miss this theory on why Furtick is hiding his house – you can get lost on this website for an afternoon.
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