>>>>How do you know whether a book is a bestseller?
>>>
>>>http://www.answers.com/topic/bestseller
>>>
>>>Scroll down a bit.
>>
>>Most of it is Wikipedia, and I loved this bit (missing in this copy, but go Wikipedia):
>>
>>"Unread bestsellers
>>
>>Bestsellers have gained such great popularity that it has sometimes become fashionable to purchase them. Critics have pointed out that just because a book is purchased doesn't mean it will be read. The rising length of bestsellers may mean that more of them are simply becoming bookshelf decor. In 1985 members of the staff of The New Republic placed coupons redeemable for cash inside Strobe Talbott's "Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control" and none of them were sent in [9]."
>
>
>Guilty as charged. I have about three shelves of unread books at the moment, most of them hardcovers. Thick biographies that cost $25-30 even at Amazon are especially big offenders. My intention is still to read all, or at least most, of them, but the backlog persists. And with new books coming out all the time....
>
>At least I have gotten a lot better about using the library instead of buying everything.

Also guilty, although I don't buy many hardcovers. I usually wait for the paperbacks, but then if you don't buy it when you see it, you may not get another chance.

I had a neat thing happen 2 weekends ago. I was in a 'Chapters' (Indigo/Chapters is the main bookstore chain in Canada), and I was heading over to the Mystery shelves. I don't usually, but that day I stopped in the general fiction section. I wanted to see if there was anything new by Robert Goddard. Anyway, I stopped and looked at the shelf in front of me, and I was in the Ds not the Gs. A book happened to catch my eye because it had an interesting cover and an interesting title - "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" . It was the same size as a hardcover, but had a soft cover. It didn't look like a 'Trade' edition though. It looked exactly like a hardcover, but with a softer cover. Inside it said "Hardcover: Canada $35.00" which I though was a lot for a book that wasn't really a hardcover. I checked their computer, and found that they had one hardcover edition ($35.00) and while the Trade was available, they had none in the store. Taking another look at the cover, I noticed at the bottom it said, "Pre-Release reading copy". Since I thought they weren't allowed to sell those, I figured I'd point it out to one of the workers, so I called to a woman who was stocking a shelf. She didn't hear me, but a guy behind me asked if he could help. He turned out to be the store manager. I showed him the book, and he looked at it and said that someone must have shelved it by accident. He said they weren't allowed to sell them. Then he said, "Well, you found it, it's yours." He went to the cash, got a bag for it and just handed it to me. I have no idea if it's any good yet, but I'll get to it soon.

Serendipity. I had no intention of looking at anything in the Ds in General Fiction.