The Amazon Best Seller Badge is something to be proud of, no matter how small you believe your success is. However, I wouldn’t put it on my book covers.
Adding “Amazon Best Seller” or “#1 Amazon Best Seller” to your book cover is not a good idea because the title, unfortunately, holds little weight among industry insiders and quickly goes away when the book drops in rank.
I would also not add the badge if my book became a bestseller when it was free. This means people downloaded the book, I didn’t sell copies which could make the “Best Seller,” misleading.
If your book is picked up by a traditional publisher and reaches best seller status, they will create a new cover with the label.
“Being an Amazon Best Seller is a credential that could mean you sold 10 books in a sub sub sub category.”
Luvvie Ajayi Jones
What Luvvie means is you can get a bestselling ribbon or become a bestseller in a random, obscure category by selling just a few books.
This doesn’t mean the author shouldn’t be proud of themselves.
This means the author should wait until they see themselves on the list consistently (holding steady for days, weeks, or months at a time) or if they are in the top categories of all books on Amazon, not just one random category.
There are many bestseller lists, and being named on any of them is an accomplishment worth celebrating.
Unfortunately, Amazon Best Seller holds the least weight, and people are so inundated by it that it no longer means much. Adding it to your book cover looks cool, but it will not help you sell more books, nor will it help you look like an accomplished author.
It could, in some ways, make you look like an amateur.
In fact, unless you are among more recognized lists, such as USA Today or the New York Times, I would leave bestseller off the cover altogether.
However, this is only my opinion so if you do it, I advise:
- Award Winning Author (if you’ve won any notable literary awards)
- Best Selling author of (Your Best Selling Title) but leave the Amazon part out
- USA Today Best Selling Author (If applies)
- New York Times Best Selling Author (If applies)
The PBS Blog 
These are good points you make. I never thought of it that way.
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Yea. I hate to have to be the one to say it cause I know how exciting it is. But, as far as the publishing landscape is concerned, being an Amazon Best Seller of an ebook doesn’t hold the weight we think it does or perceive it does online.
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That is true. It is exciting, but not very meaningful.
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Yea, I think it’s still meaningful. It’s just been watered down and oversold to mean more than it does. It’s like winning an award online that doesn’t carry the same weight offline, lol.
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