(1) You can also make much more profit per copy as a self-publisher. (2) As a self-publisher, you can afford to produce small niche books that a publisher wouldn't touch. The increased profit per copy makes it worth your while even at very low sales volumes.

With fiction, that makes some sense to me. (Although, if I hate vampire books why would I care that a million people bought them last month?)

With nonfiction, it doesn't make sense at all. If you are interested in a topic, look for a book about it. If you aren't interested in the topic, why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is?

Think "Born to Run", or "1421".

Second, not all nonfiction books are true and correct accounts of science and history. That gives them quite a bit of leeway for being exciting and enjoyable.

Third, there is actually a nonfiction audience. Some people don't like fiction They just can't bring themselves to care about the lives and deeds of people who don't exist. Then again, you can only do so much focused, specialized reading on a single topic like astronomy or Russian history unless your brain is broken in that special way that makes you a fantastic researcher. So there is a large audience of people who relax by reading an essentially random nonfiction book on a topic they know nothing about simply because it's supposed to be an enjoyable read. And best seller lists are good places to find enjoyable reads.

Maybe the author has something to do with it? :) People like good books, and good books make dull topics seem interesting.

A good author can make a dry topic really interesting. "The Other God" for instance--how many people are going to be interested in a book about the history of dualist religion? But it turns out to be a real page-turner.

A good author can apply their skills in a surprising area and create a very interesting book. For instance, "The Cleanest Race" isn't just about North Korea, it's also about doing comparative analysis on propaganda. To me, this doesn't make the topic narrower, it makes it broader. People like me who aren't interested in comparative analysis find out it's an interesting tool when applied to something I'm interested in, and I imagine if you were the other way around you'd enjoy the book too.

I found out about "The Rise of Christianity" from a Catholic friend of mine, and now it's one of my favorite books, despite not being a Christian. The author took a pretty dry topic (the early history of Christianity) and made it interesting by applying modern sociology and anthropology to it. That he writes well and comes to interesting conclusions makes it a good book.

I think it makes more sense within a category/genre. Once you are looking for say books on programming language x, have a way to select the books which are most popular is definitely valuable, and even better if you can select the books which are most popular with a certain population that you respect or with particular people you respect in that area. Perhaps publishers will transition away from providing channel access to recommendation and search engines. I suppose with Amazon taking over you could say this transition has already started but it has a long way to go yet.

I work with a lot of publishers and they're still frozen, looking at the headlights rapidly approaching, and unsure which way to jump. One thing is for sure though - paper media (ephemeral or books) is going to be massively disrupted over the next decade, and this disruption is only just beginning, everyone can see this but its hard to see exactly which way this is going. My personal bet is that the web will take over completely from all these paper products, and be served on all sorts of devices, but making money on that content is far from a sure thing.

Not feeling left out, conversational one-upsmanship (upspersonship?), being able to intelligently banter with strangers who are reading the same thing (since it's so popular), ...

Didja watch?

That is the opposite of what I'd think. Nonfiction includes current topics like books on political figures. Fiction is all over the map and, with the exception of crossover titles like Primary Colors that were about current political figures but written as fiction, typically isn't tied to a current event in such a way that it matters what week it was on the NY times bestseller list for others to see that they might want to read it and buy it.

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Offtopic: everyone reading this stuff up here- scroll down to Tim O'Reilly's comment below before you jump on the O'Reilly bashing train.

I think it is more complicated than that. I am interested in many topics, but at many different degrees of interest, and I don't have time to look for high-quality books on all of them, especially the lesser ones. However, I may see a book on a bestseller list that happens to coincide with one of those interests, especially one that I haven't read much on recently, and it may make me interested in reading that book when I might not have come across it otherwise.

(Edit: I realize high-quality != popular, but it's often a reasonable proxy for casual interests.)

Most bestselling non-fiction falls into the popsci category. Think: *A brief History of Nearly Everything, Freakonomics, Blink, Tipping Point, etc. So by all means, people who want something slightly factier than a novel while still being accessible might well turn to thed non-fiction bestseller list.

But isn't fiction the same as nonfiction? I don't only read a small set of nonfiction books that come from a pointed search on a single subject. I read what is interested and related to my fields of interest (which is identical to what I do with fiction).

Either the fiction results will suck ("People who like Fantasy also like Harry Potter -- have you tried it?" i.e. not targeted to the subgenre and thus useless) or nonfiction results are possible.

The take home is this: Have a more granular ability to present social lists for both fiction and non-fiction.

If you can detect what type of fiction I like based on others, you can do the same for non-fiction. You can tell that I like certain subjects and people who share those likes might have some overlap that I would also enjoy.

Care to shoot me an email? Email is in my profile.

I just don't think many authors want to do A/B testing, find editors, illustrators and not to forget coordinate marketing, PR, book tour on their own.

Working professionals usually have so many things on their table, that keeping some basic outreach on social media sites intact is demanding enough. This "you can do it on your own" is such an superficial argument. If I want to fly cross country, I don't want to assemble the plane myself - even if there are perfectly good options out there on different DIY aircrafts. Arguing, that there are now ready made components for DIY kit out there that some successful hobbyists have used with very much success, doesn't make it any easier.

I can guarantee you I am not particularly interested in the publishing process. I want to be an author, not a soup-to-nuts businessman about it. I want to write a very nice book and give a publishing house a cut in exchange for them handling the messy business. Maybe if the book is very popular (doubtful), I would be interested in doing it again, and maybe myself. Probabilities suggest that I'll wind up getting a small check every month, even if I did do the business part myself.

That's it; they don't do significant marketing for any but an expected blockbuster. Stephen King or Bill Gates they'd market. You? Nope. If you want your book marketed YOU have to do it, on your time and dime. If you give classes or lectures, you sit at a table in the lobby afterward and flog books. Tout them at conferences. Link to the amazon listing (which you can get even when you self-publish).

In any decent size town you can find competent editors on craig's list, or anywhere in the world via the web[1], to edit your text as a shared google doc (for example). People who will work with you one-on-one to lay out a book in Illustrator are to be cheaply found, if you don't have that skill yourself. Illustrators to work up a snappy cover design from your sketch. You might end up paying a few $K to bring a book to completely professional standard. You don't do it all, you act as manager and QC. Then you upload it to an online publisher [2] and you can start selling it -- on exactly the same terms methods as you'd start selling one made by a publisher, but you keep a lot more of the gross.

[1] e.g. http://www.scribophile.com/ [2] e.g. blurb.com, lulu.com and many others.

Based on $50/h, a book with 100 pages and 2h/page(research, structure, writing, etc) we are at $10.000 just to break even - without considering any external fees/time invested in editing, layout, design - or promotion.

Even based on a 100% earings rate, it seems save to assume that most "profitable" books are just a tool for personal promotion/expert positioning.

Same as in music or movie industries. They squeeze all they can from the common folk. I hope more authors will go independent and help further disrupt the monstrous middle man.

And that article is now 2 years old - it would be interesting to know the current sales ratio between paper and digital books.