If there is a single motivation that informs most authors it is the desire to see one of our works become a genuine bestseller.

I've had the privilege and it is a heady, if not lucrative experience.

I've also published books that have garnered disappointing sales.

What's the difference?

There are several factors that auger well for a title. It should be timely. It should appeal to a clearly identifiable audience, and if it has a sharp angle on a topic, it can rise to the top.

But even more important is promotion.

If you are willing to "Do a Wayne Dyer," who famously loaded his station wagon with his title that he then promoted high and low on radio stations and at book signings across the country, you stand a better chance of coming up a big winner.

His inaugural work, "Pulling Your Own Strings," is still a good read. It is empowering, and its message of discarding other people's opinions in favor of your own, resonates for millions.

Yet, despite the fact that it is a solid and helpful tome, I suspect thousands of other books were, in their ways, just as meritorious. But they didn't reach any bestseller list.

Dyer, as I understand it, was tireless in his self-promotion. He believed completely in the merit of his book, and he at least temporarily turned over his life to touting it.

Comparatively, his publisher did a fraction of what the author did to make the book a hit.

I worked my way through college, notably with Time-Life Books, famous for their nature, science, cooking, and travel libraries. We sold directly to consumers, and seldom would our titles appear in conventional bookstores.

Time-Life owned the entire process of book development and distribution. In fact, my boss boasted, "We even own our own forests, so we control access to the paper we use in our books!"

We sold everything on a ten-day trial, which framed properly, was an offer many readers couldn't refuse. This got our titles out the door and into people's hands.

We went to them, aggressively, through direct mail, through our magazines, and through telephone selling.

And we made titles you never heard of into bestsellers, with orders that collectively soared into the millions. Yet, in any given year, we never appeared on the radar of bestseller lists.

TLB published quality volumes, but generally, they were not Pulitzer material. What made them successful was the PUSH we put behind them.

Time-Life wasn't interested in hustling single copies at a time-we focused on selling the library-concept, the idea of collecting an entire set at the rate of one book every couple of months.

You don't have to settle for individual orders of your book, either.

If you have a practical title that can appeal to corporations, by selling the CEO, you can move hundreds and thousands of copies at a shot.

Cleverly, the brains behind the "Chicken Soup" book series did something similar in getting a pet food manufacturer to co-brand some of their animal-lover titles and distribute them through veterinarians' offices.

By the way, the original "Chicken Soup" book was rejected by scores of publishers until an obscure Florida firm took a chance with it. But even then, the authors committed to personally buying a significant number of copies for sale at their speaking engagements.

As you can see, well before I started writing books, I sold books for a living, and I made a good one in doing it. If there is a single lesson I derived from being an insider it is this:

You can make any book a bestseller!

Please reread that last sentence. Typically, what word would you emphasize, if you read it, aloud?

It would be ANY, right?

Emphasize YOU, instead, and it will make all the difference in predicting your book's success, and perhaps yours, as well.