My feeling is what gets on the NYT bestseller list is less to do with how true or important the book is, and more to do with vibes. I have a (baseless) feeling that most normal people will see a book with "everyone dies" in the title and not buy it.

@pietrokc

that most normal people will see a book with "everyone dies" in the title and not buy it.

I strongly disagree. Tons of viral content and bestselling books are centered around Doomsday / Apocalyptic predictions (both fiction and non fiction)

few recent examples: Oppenheimer (long + black and white biopic) made over a billion dollars. Black Mirror is super popular etc

1. It confirms peoples existing biases against AI & Tech — normies are concered about AI from decades of Sci Fi, NYT is not a big fan of “tech bros” , concern around AI taking people’s jobs, AI labs IP theft etc

2. Negativity Bias — Evolutionarily we’re biased toward information that helps us survive / warns of imminent danger

@pietrokc The bestseller list is, as it turns out, less about being the best seller and more about good marketing and getting the attention of the NYT editorial board. This is going through a legit, traditional publisher who knows how to push for a place on the list, and the marketing copy so far is solid. 70% is probably pretty fair, leaning optimistic but certainly a reasonable probability.

I preordered the book.

@pietrokc I agree. Also, is it is far from clear to me that it is true or important.

@elf Fair points about Oppenheimer and Black Mirror. I'll harp again on this distinction though: neither of these have "everyone will die" in the title. Again I'm not saying it won't be a bestseller; just that the odds are <70%.

For some context, the base rate for a book getting on the NYT bestseller list is 0.5%. So people are positing a >100x multiplier on this book. That feels way too high, and the Manifold community is known to be way too obsessed with AI.

@CraigDemel I personally don't think EY's stronger claims about AI are anywhere close to true, but I wanted to keep that out of the equation since this market is at best indirectly about what's true.

@pietrokc The base rate is a lot higher for books by this specific publisher.

@Driftloom That's really interesting. Do you have concrete numbers?

@pietrokc I have napkin math. LBC is one of the six adult-trade imprints at Hachette Book Group. Making some assumptions about share of total output and share of bestseller output, their base rate to end up on the NYT list is ~8%.

@CraigDemel Graham Hancock sells a lot of books. The truth and importance of a nonfiction topic is… fairly orthogonal to its sales.

Can you provide more firm criteria? Which lists? To what placement? Top 15? Top 5?

@bens o3's analysis: https://chatgpt.com/share/6824f9fe-503c-800f-9eb8-3bc5dec8ab47

Seems like the online list goes to 35?

@bens What do people use when they say it's an NYT bestseller?

@NathanpmYoung publishers use the internal, online-only 35 book long list. NYT publishes the top 15 on its website

@NathanpmYoung ya I think books refer to themselves as "best-sellers" if they make the top 35, but the website appears to only show me top 15 across several categories (for which this book would be eligible likely in Paperback Non-fiction, Hard Cover Non-fiction, and Combined Print & E-book Non-fiction). Ummm, I suggest picking one and sticking with it, I guess!

@bens oh I see you picked top 35, that's good with me!

Added M$2500 subsidy and boosted for $M10k. Can you add a link to the book from the description?