A best-seller? Well, maybe.

The Book of Answers has been in the market since about July 5. Within 10 days, I received word that it was on the best-seller lists. You know me. I tweeted it all over the planet immediately and leaked the word into Facebook. Congratulations poured in from far and wide. Everyone apparently knew I had it in me all along.

Privately, though, I was baffled and skeptical. My earlier book, Travels with the Fish, also printed in India by a slightly different HarperCollins publishers, had been on the India Today best-seller lists for two years or so — and I knew what no one else did. That only 2,000 copies had been printed. Of these I myself bought about 470 and distributed it to sundry friends. And five years later, 80 copies were unceremoniously pulped.

But the question is a serious one — how many copies would you expect an English language novel should sell in a country of 1.21 billion people to earn the honor of being called a best-seller? Just a 1,000? Really? No one reads any more? Or do they just pass one book around? I took an informal poll just today, by asking the question on Facebook: How many books do you think an English language best-seller sell in a country like India? Take a look at the choices I provided and the way they polled —

A few hundreds — 0%

Between 1,000 and 5,000 — 4%

Under 10,000 — 47%

30,000-40,000 — 26.3%

20,000-100,000 —22.7%

Notice anything? Nearly half those who polled think an Indian author has sales in 5 figures. Of those, half think the author sells between 30,000 and 40,000. Here’s a glimpse of harsh reality: one January 9, 2009, Booker prize winner Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger topped the India Today best-seller list — with total sales of  2,797 copies. Number 2 was Chetan Bhagat’s The three mistakes of my life with1,546 copies. Amitava Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies was #5, with 765 copies.

David Baldacci’s Divine Justice was #19, with a mere 131 copies. Other luminaries in the list, floundering with three-digit sales, are John le Carré, Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner), Jhumpa Lahiri and Eric von Lustbrader. For the whole list, look here.

If you’re incredulous, you should be. Is that all a book sells in India?

Take The Book of Answers again. Could they really know within two weeks of release how many copies of my book had sold? Not rocket science — there’s no way you can gather data that fast in a country the size of India. I pored carefully over the report showing my book in a Top Ten Best-seller list, looking for sources. The newspaper was The Telegraph, originally a Calcutta newspaper but now more national. Their single source, listed in fine print at the bottom of the box, was Bahrisons, a respected Delhi bookstore. So — someone in The Telegraph picks up the phone and asks someone in Bahrisons, “What’s selling?”. The bookseller replies, “Oh, The Book of Answers is selling like hot cakes. We sold all three copies, and just now one guy asked for another.” Based on this irrefutable evidence of sales, The Telegraph decides that TBoA is a best-seller.

Is this the inner working of the best-seller business in India?

In Canada, the rule of thumb is 5,000 copies for a best-seller. In the UK, a hardcover could be considered a best-seller if it sold between 4,000 and 25,000 copies in a week. Which introduces the element of time. Given enough time, any book will sell 25,000 copies, but does anyone really believe that a fledgeling Indian publisher would have the sophisticated and sensitive marketing and distribution network to ascertain weekly sales? And is it based on a random sample of bookstores or is a catch-all?

How the world does it

The New York Times, one of the world’s more respected best-seller lists, only takes figures from national and independent book stores. The Amazon.com best-seller list, on the other hand, is based only on sales in amazon.com, and updated every hour, though they do not factor in wholesale figures. By carefully timing campaigns and exploiting frequent adjustments to rankings, faith healing author Zhi Gang Shah created several #1 NY Times best-sellers. Sometimes a single book dominates the list for too long, and things start looking cramped. This happened when J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books dominated the #1, #2 and #3 for so long that the NY Times reportedly created a new Children category just to clear the decks.

In the USA, more sophisticated systems are emerging that take advantage of retail electronics. The USA’s Nielsen BookScan U.S. is tries to produce a completely automatic and trusted set of bestseller lists, driven by data gathered directly from cash registers at more than 4,500 retail locations, including independent bookstores, large chains such as Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Books, and the general retailer Costco.

And then there’s the amazing Dr Didier Somette, professor of geophysics and complex system, who apparently cobbled together a mathematical formula using amazon.com data, to predict a possible best-seller based on early sales data.

Several thing seem clear to me —

1. Being a best-seller does not mean that you have sold a certain number of copies.

2. Books sell over time. If someone claims a certain book is a best-seller, you should ask how long it’s been selling. The Bible is supposed to be a best-seller, but it’s been on the stands for 2,000 years. For the average Joe or Janardhan, I’d say count your blessings if your book hits even 1,000 copies.

3. Books emerge into the light slowly. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was a flop, saleswise. Then, to everyone’s surprise, it began to acquire a growing and enthusiastic following, apparently through book reading groups. Next thing, we started hearing those mysterious words, ‘underground bestseller’. Means it’s selling well, against all odds, but no one know why, how, or how many.

4. Being in a best-seller list doesn’t mean that it’s a good book. It is accepted wisdom that good literature seldom shows up in a best-seller list.

If you want to dig in to the inner workings of a best-seller, click here.

And what about The Book of Answers? I think I’d like to be an underground best-seller. Or failing that, a cult classic. I believe there is an even an emerging category called Worstsellers — I’m sure any book that shows up there quickly would attract so much attention that it would become a best-seller.