bestseller

noun

best·​sell·​er ˈbes(t)-ˈse-lər How to pronounce bestseller (audio)
variants or best seller
plural bestsellers or best sellers
: a popular product and especially a book whose sales are among the highest of its class
[Isabel] Allende's new book is spun from the stuff of epic romances: eternal love, lost innocence, distant locales, revolution. In short, all the elements of a sure bestseller.Julie K. L. Dam
The Harvard Book Store Café … is not only the obvious choice for the latest best seller but the intelligent break for a shopper's graze.Alice Rubenstein Gochman
Two million copies have been sold, and it has been on the New York Times bestseller list for four years.Judith Daniels
… the two Fisher-Price bestsellers are the company's Fun with Food [toy] series and the Fisher-Price Fun with Food Kitchen.The New Yorker
She knows what the mass market wants—Vanderbilt and Chaps [fragrances] are best sellers—and she has a flair for what appeals to a more specialized market …Amy Singer
best-sellerdom noun
best-selling adjective

Examples of bestseller in a Sentence

She has written several best sellers.
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Both Girl, 1983 and Unquiet were nominated for Northern Europe’s most prestigious literary award, the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and were bestsellers throughout Scandinavia. Literary Hub, 25 July 2025 Her 2024 book, What in the World?, was a bestseller. Belinda Luscombe, Time, 24 July 2025 Cemetery Boys was also the first book written by an openly transgender author, and centering a transgender character, to hit the New York Times’ fiction bestseller list. Carly Tagen-Dye, People.com, 22 July 2025 Her memoir This American Woman, which came out earlier this year, is a New York Times bestseller. Anna Moeslein, Glamour, 18 July 2025 Additionally, celebrity book clubs, such as Oprah’s Book Club and Reese’s Book Club, have a significant impact on book sales, catapulting titles to the bestseller lists. Cheryl Robinson, Forbes.com, 17 July 2025 Published in 2021 by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Hazelwood’s novel spent 10 months on the New York Times bestseller list, breaking out internationally in 40 countries, and was named the Best Romance of the Year by Amazon. Matt Grobar, Deadline, 17 July 2025 The book spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold over 1 million copies to date. Joe Otterson, Variety, 17 July 2025 All three were chronicled in Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, which was released in 2010 and stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing 203 weeks. Lee Habeeb, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 July 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1864, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of bestseller was in 1864

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Cite this Entry

“Bestseller.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bestseller. Accessed 7 Aug. 2025.

Kids Definition

best-seller

noun
best-sell·​er
ˈbes(t)-ˈsel-ər
: an article (as a book) whose sales are among the highest of its kind
best-selling
-ˈsel-iŋ
adjective

More from Merriam-Webster on bestseller

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