How many fans, followers on Twitter or on Wattpad, how many copies of your self-published ebook used to push an editor of a major publishing house to think that you won you a real audience and not a pit of sycophants who will never go to the library?

There are many cases of authors, in Italy and abroad, who have been successful in bookstores after conquering the network.
I will mention a few, while defining four types:

The bloggers
To his colleagues is a myth. Lucrezia Scali, born in 1986, a veterinary student, was self-published his debut novel, I'll tell softly, which is immediately splashed at the top of the best selling digital books. Then came Newton & Compton, the print edition and the third place in the top 10 best-selling books of the Corriere della Sera.

The proletarian
He was Rowling's first Harry Potter (although Internet here has nothing to do), we now have Anna Todd. Let's face it, if you want to follow in their footsteps, you have to write your novels in suburban bars, at home while doing the cleaning and run after the children or the night taking advantage of the insignia Light Anna Todd strada.After is a soft porn for young adults (the 17 shades of gray?). If you've never seen, it means that you are not entered in the library in the last two months. Published on the Web by a young twenty-three, was successful and was then bought in America by Simon & Schuster and Italy by Sperling & Kupfer.

The poet
If you want to observe the phenomenon as it occurs (and not afterwards, when maybe it came down even a movie) you write to Google the name of this girl: Susanna Casciani. She is one of aphorisms factory, surely you know of some, even if you do not remember who wrote them: "To shake a heart that has suffered, it takes twice the love you lost." Better to suffer than putting in a closet the heart is the title of the novel due out soon with Mondadori. So, at the time, a bet to watch.

The idealist or the whimsical (who is also an encore)
And if you think this is just the straw fires, look instead did Dikele Antonio Distefano, Italian Angolan origin. Its raining outside, inside as well, I'll pick if it was published by himself and only if it was promoted by organizing evenings, presentations, meetings in schools, creating short videos that they soon began to depopulate the net. His strength was from the outset authenticity. His post dripping with realism, even when talking about fictional stories. His novel touched sensitive issues (love and racism) and it was a true story.
The secret: to read does not read (ie the vast majority of the population) but look and listen, or the huge community of surfers on the net. In her videos, in fact, often read his books pages, gives a face to the characters, it shows a film even if the film is not (yet).
His numbers today are these:
Facebook Page: 70000
Personal profile: 108,000
Views of the video on average: 150,000 / 200,000
But even before the arrival of Mondadori, Antonio was already a phenomenon (the historian of his post proves it). The new edition has sold 100,000 copies in less than a year and the production company Lux Vide has acquired the rights to make a film.
On February 17, he will be in bookshops his new novel, Sooner or later we will hug each other, always with Mondadori.
It will make an encore?

Summing up, I try to answer the title question: how I like to serve to make a best seller?
There is no scientific answer, and there are exceptions, but you can put stakes.

On Facebook (page or profile that is): you have to have a total of no less than 20,000 fans and your post must obtain an average of 500 I love it.

For a self-published novel, no less than 15,000 / 20,000 copies (true, not what they say it has sold. Publishers have all the tools to control ...).

If your platform is Wattpad: 40,000 readers (not less than 100,000 if you are writing the fanfiction One Direction umpteenth).

If you do not have these numbers, you have two choices: either you study the publishing events of which it was said, or try to write a good book, period. Fashions in the publishing world, come and go and do not be surprised if in a few years, he began to speak of new best seller that have nothing to do with the internet, written by hermits authors who do not even have a profile Facebook.

From Wired