In order to hit #1 on Amazon, you’ll need to sell between 3,500 and 5,000 copies in 24 hours. To make it onto the Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list, a book needs at least 3,000 to 5,000 sales. Your book sales must be distributed. However this number varies depending on the category, competition and timing of the release. In less crowded genres it may be possible to achieve bestseller status by selling just a few hundred copies. Amazon updates its bestseller lists every hour. One week there may be many high selling books, whereas in the summer each book might sell fewer copies. The number may be fewer for more specific genres.
To be a NY Times bestseller, you must sell between 5,000-10,000 copies in one week.
If you want to make a living writing, your odds are 1 in 10,000. But to just get published and get some consistent sales, your odds are about 1 in 100. James Patterson is the number one best selling author with estimated 300 million sales.
Amazon updates its bestseller lists every hour. So a book may fluctuate in and out of the top rankings depending on sales within a specific timeframe.
Your book sales must be distributed. Bestseller lists have historically favored traditionally published titles. However, self-published books can get on bestseller lists.