With more and more books getting published every day, the word 'bestseller' is thrown around more loosely. Previously, the publishing industry was a lot more controlled and there were far fewer names on the bestselling lists. Even if writing is not your main profession, adding the title 'bestselling author' to your name somehow gives you more credibility. To become a bestselling author, one must appear on a bestseller list somewhere. There are several such lists around the world, but some are more coveted than others.

Nothing is more prestigious for an author than mentioning that they are a number 1 bestselling author. However, what does it really mean? With countless bestseller lists across the globe, each using different criteria, it will be a lot easier to get onto certain lists than others. Therefore, the title will not carry the same value across the board. Just because your book appeared on a bestseller list somewhere in the world does not put you anywhere near an author whose book was on The New York Times Best Seller list or other such prestigious lists.

The very first bestseller list in America was published in The Bookman in 1895, but the world's most coveted bestseller list, The New York Times Best Seller list was only published 36 years later in 1931. It now appears weekly in The New York Times Book Review. The list has undergone some changes to become more detailed and is now broken down into fiction, non-fiction, paperback, hardcover and electronic, and then further into genres.

The New York Times Bestseller list is the most popular among all and an author who makes it onto this list has really made it. However, there are several other lists that carry great value and these include Amazon.com, ABA IndieBound (ABA), Publishers Weekly (PBW), Barnes & Noble (BAN), USA Today (USA), The Los Angeles Times (LAT), The Denver Post (DPO), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), WalMart.com (WAL) and The Boston Globe (BOG) among others. Around the world, you will find many more lists.

Each of these lists uses different criteria to rank books. For example, to compile The New York Times Best Seller list, weekly sales figures are obtained from selected bookstores and from some wholesalers in the United States. However, how exactly those figures are used remains a closely guarded secret to ensure that authors and publishers do not try to manipulate the system. The Amazon Bestseller list, on the other hand, simply uses the sales figures for all books sold through Amazon.

The term that gets even more tricky, yet it looks so prestigious, is 'Number 1 international bestselling author'. As much as this term looks glamorous, it might not carry as much weight as say The New York Times Bestseller. What 'international bestselling author' actually means is that at one point, somewhere in the world, this author's book appeared on a bestselling list. It does not matter where it was or what list. All that counts here is that it was on a list outside the author's country. As much as it might be a lot easier now to get on a bestseller list, please remember that not all lists carry the same weight.