bestseller

American  

[best-sel-er] / ˈbɛstˈsɛl ər /

Or best seller

noun

bestsellers plural

1. a book that is among those having the largest sales during a given period.

2. any product that among those of its kind is selling particularly well at a given time.

   This car was a bestseller last year.

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bestseller British  

/ ˌbɛstˈsɛlə /

noun

1. a book, record, CD, or other product that has sold in great numbers, esp over a short period

2. the author of one or more such books, etc

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• bestsellerdom
  noun
• best-selling
  adjective
• bestselling
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• bestsellers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of bestseller

An Americanism dating back to 1885–90; best + seller

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bestseller bestsellers

And the humorous style of his Little Black Bird Book, published in 1980, made it a bestseller.

From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, a 2023 memoir by former courier Hu Anyan, became a runaway bestseller in China and also captured media attention abroad.

From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026

“A Woman of Substance,” based on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s 1979 bestseller, is being sold to an American audience as a “Downton Abbey” replacement.

From Salon ● Jul. 19, 2026

According to Griffin’s dueling lawsuit, every element of her former classmate’s account is false, and the accusation that Griffin “stole the rape of another woman and built a bestseller on it” is fabricated.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2026

Based on a recently published bestseller, The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, La Traviata was met at first with moral outrage.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

The books - called Culpa Mia, Culpa Tuya and Culpa Nuestra were all written before she was aged 20, and after launching on Wattpad, they went on to became bestsellers, and hugely popular with teenagers.

From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2026

But on the bestsellers display at your favorite local indie, it represents the small pleasure of palming a near-pocket-size book in your hands.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2026

While the New York Times bestsellers from 2025 skew in favor of the 6-by-9 trim, the popularity of 5-by-8 books appears to be on the rise.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2026

In 2013, she started her own line of skin care and makeup that became bestsellers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

They read some popular psychology—Eric Berne’s Games People Play sticks in my mind, because my father still quotes from it—and bestsellers like Leon Uris’s Topaz.

From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove