Best Seller Quotes

Being a writer is a gift, being an author is amazing, becoming a best seller is everyone's dream ~ LaQuita Cameron

Lately, because computer technology has made self-publishing an easier and less expensive venture, I'm getting a lot of review copies of amateur books by writers who would be better advised to hone their craft before committing it to print. The best thing you can do as a beginning writer is to write, write, write - and read, read, read. Concentrating on publication prematurely is a mistake. You don't pick up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall within the year - yet somehow people forget that writing also requires technical skills that need to be learned, practiced, honed. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who thought, with no prior experience, they could sit down and write a novel and instantly win awards and make their living as a writer, I'd be a rich woman today. It's unrealistic, and it's also mildly insulting to professional writers who have worked hard to perfect their craft. Of course, then you hear stories about people like J.K. Rowling, who did sit down with no prior experience and write a worldwide best-seller...but such people are as rare as hen's teeth. Every day I work with talented, accomplished writers who have many novels in print and awards to their name and who are 'still' struggling to make a living. The thing I often find myself wanting to say to new writers is: Write because you love writing, learn your craft, be patient, and be realistic. Anais Nin said about writing, "It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it bre ~ Terri Windling

Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought. ~ Studs Terkel

Like the magnolia tree,
She bends with the wind,
Trials and tribulation may weather her,
Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms,
See her standing there, like steel,
With her roots forever buried,
Deep in her Southern soil. ~ Nancy B. Brewer

However, the daily life of the slaves in the South, as observed by many travelers, was obscured for all time by the relentless promotion of a single book, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Even today, any black who dares to say that perhaps we are not as badly off as our brethren in the jungles of Africa is hooted down as an "Uncle Tom." [ ... ] It was no accident that Harriet Beecher Stowe's book became the greatest best seller of its time - it was tirelessly promoted throughout the entire nation, in the most successful book promotion campaign in our history. ~ Eustace Mullins

Perhaps that is why we humans are so devoted to animals, because they are not turned off by the outward appearances people so often judge us by.We may love horses for their sheer beauty but I don't think they fall in love with us for ours. Nor do they need to know how much we have achieved or how we rank on a best-seller list. They accept us for who we are. ~ Susan Richards

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail. ~ James A. Michener

When you've written 10 books and have six on the New York Times best-seller list - and four have been No. 1 - I think you have a right to be a member of Congress. ~ Marianne Williamson

Here's the deal. Willi's bought the rights to a paperback best-seller called The White Slaver. It's a piece of formulized shit written for illiterate fourteen-year-olds and the kind of lobotomized housewife that lines up to buy the new Harlequin romances each month. Jack-off material for intellectual quadriplegics. Naturally ~ Dan Simmons

A friend of mine suddenly announced she had written a novel and got a publishing deal; I thought, 'Hang on ... if she can do it, I can bloody well do it, too.' That novel went to a bidding war, and went on to be a huge best-seller. ~ Jane Green

The heart aches in brokenness as daylight awakens the pain of knowing. ~ Phindiwe Nkosi

Somehow, women's romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said "No". They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this "marry the rapist" theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women's most enduring romance novels. ~ Warren Farrell

I started a deli when I was 19 years old. Kevin O's. The sandwiches at Kevin O's were a little like Subway before Subway - fresh baked bread. My best seller was turkey with cream cheese and artichoke hearts. I just made it up. ~ Kevin McCarthy

There was a red snake of blood symbolizing her life, and its end. ~ Viveca Benoir

At the same time, popular notions of marriage and the home were challenged on other fronts. Utopian communities experimented with radical new forms of marriage or, as in the Oneida Community, did away with it altogether. The Shakers took up celibacy, the Mormons polygamy; and Charles Knowlton issued an underground best-seller on birth control methods. William Alcott, Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and scores of other experts countered ~ Ann Jones

Some people get their books on the best-seller list and then they count the number of weeks, and I just never want to live that way. ~ Lorrie Moore

You cannot replace kindness by cleverness. ~ Kamon

I've interviewed presidents and royalty, rock stars and movie stars, famous generals and captains of industry; I've had front row seats at Super Bowls, World Series, and Olympic Games; my books have been on best-seller lists, and my marriage is a long-running success. ~ Tom Brokaw

No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality. ~ Rebecca West

Everyone had a story he believed was worthy of a best-seller; for me, reality was rarely interesting enough to take the place of fiction. ~ Ben Mezrich

Every life is a story make your life a best seller. ~ Inspirational Sayings

Sell a million books - Very nice...
Release a best seller - Amazing...
Your book just makes one person smile, laugh or happy - Better than anything !! ~ Jimmy Perrin

The principles underlying propaganda are extremely simple. Find some common desire, some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety; think out some way to relate this wish or fear to the product you have to sell; then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols over which your customer can pass from fact to compensatory dream, and from the dream to the illusion that your product, when purchased, will make the dream come true. They are selling hope.

We no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not just buy an auto, we buy prestige. And so with all the rest. In toothpaste, for example, we buy not a mere cleanser and antiseptic, but release from the fear of being sexually repulsive. In vodka and whisky we are not buying a protoplasmic poison which in small doses, may depress the nervous system in a psychologically valuable way; we are buying friendliness and good fellowship, the warmth of Dingley Dell and the brilliance of the Mermaid Tavern. With our laxatives we buy the health of a Greek god. With the monthly best seller we acquire culture, the envy of our less literate neighbors and the respect of the sophisticated. In every case the motivation analyst has found some deep-seated wish or fear, whose energy can be used to move the customer to part with cash and so, indirectly, to turn the wheels of industry. ~ Aldous Huxley

To be No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, well, that's alarming. Having been a stand-up comedian, I think it's surprising to a lot of people that I had the insight I had. ~ Steve Harvey

Remember where you're standing when the spotlight goes off," Lovell warned me once, when our book was a best-seller and the movie it spawned was in theatres. "You'll have to find your own way off the stage. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

Sometimes your dream is so special that ... you can't kill it. You can't die even if you try. Life will find a way to fulfill it, and a way to keep you alive. Because the Earth needs dreamers to survive. ~ Haidji

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Life is a story, make yours a Best Seller! ~ Reback

In the twentieth century our highest praise is to call the Bible 'The World's Best Seller.' And it has come to be more and more difficult to say whether we think it is a best seller because it is great, or vice versa. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Bestseller is not the one who sells a million.
Best Seller is the one who has no customers, only friends. ~ Vineet Raj Kapoor

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE UNHAPPY ... SO LAUGH INSANELY, KISS SOFTLY, AND MAKE LOVE PASSIONATELY ... ~ Muffin

l'after-shave, le badge, le barbeque, le best-seller, le blue-jean, le blues, le bluff, le box-office, le break, le bridge, le bulldozer, le business, le cake, la call-girl, le cashflow, le check-in, le chewing-gum, le club, le cocktail, la cover-girl, le cover-story, le dancing, le design, le discount, le do-it-yourself, le doping, le fan, le fast-food, le feedback, le freezer, le gadget, le gangster, le gay, le hall, le handicap, le hold-up, le jogging, l'interview, le joker, le kidnapping, le kit, le knock-out, le label, le leader, le look, le manager, le marketing, le must, les news, le parking, le pickpocket, le pipeline, le planning, le playboy, le prime time, le pub, le puzzle, se relaxer, le self-service, le software, le snack, le slogan, le steak, le stress, le sweatshirt, le toaster and le week-end. ~ Alexis Munier

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly. ~ David Lagercrantz

Sure, best seller. I'd love to knock Stephen King off the top of the list. I know I won't, but, after all, I spend my life inventing a different reality. ~ Tim O'Brien

They were ... no ordinary group, gathering together to kill an evening, to seek refuge from critical husbands and demanding children while idly discussing their new best-seller. They met because literature was their shared passion. Books were as important to them as breath itself. They shared the ability to immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters, to argue passionately about the development of plots, about decisions taken, dilemmas resolved. ~ Gloria Goldreich

A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers. ~ Aldous Huxley

The book was sloppily written in many parts (the words came too quickly and too easily) and there was hardly a noun in any sentence that was not holding hands with the nearest and most commonly available adjective - scalding coffee and tremulous fear are the sorts of thing you will find throughout. Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing. ~ Norman Mailer

Life is a story. Make yours the best seller. ~ Unknown

Heinlein never had a best-seller. Even, I think, with Stranger in a Strange Land, I don't think it was actually on the New York Times best seller list. ~ Jerry Pournelle

Even if you are a best-seller you feel insecure because it is all so unpredictable. ~ Patricia Cornwell

Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house. ~ Amanda Hocking

If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days. ~ Albert Brooks

I've been lucky enough to win an Oscar, write a best-seller - my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre. The only way that's going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentlemen's lavatory. ~ David Niven

Everyone knows that children and teens want to blend in and follow the crowd. And from whom do they learn this lesson? Adults, of course. Let's face it: Americans follow the herd. If you want to be successful, we are told in myriad ways, conformity is the way to go. Look at corporate America, with its "team player" ethic and all the strict rules delineating what you can and cannot wear on Casual Fridays. Consider the cycles of women's fashion, which dictate when square-toed, chunky-heeled shoes are out and when pointy-toed, ankle-straining stilettos are in. And what about best-seller lists and electoral horse-race polls and movie box-office postings? Everyone wants to know what everyone else is reading and seeing and thinking--so that they can go out and read and see and think the very same things themselves.

If adults possess this tendency to efface themselves in this way, teenagers have it magnified to the thousandth degree. But studying and following the fashions of the times are not enough; teens also feel a need to be associated with fashionable people--the popular people. Their goal is to crack the glass ceiling that separates mere mortals from the "in" crowd. If they are unsuccessful, and most are, they console themselves with a clique of their own. Even an unpopular clique is, the thinking goes, is better than no clique at all. ~ Leora Tanenbaum

Sometimes the writer has to learn the hard way of creating a bad work to become a best-seller yet doesn't surrender to the negative where other writers will. ~ Millicent Ashby

Ask yourself, what makes my book so different? So interesting? Don't write to be a best seller. Write for and from your heart, not your wallet. Write something you want to be remembered by. ~ Leon Nacson

In the context of novel writing, this means you should lower the bar from "best-seller" to "would not make someone vomit." Exuberant imperfection encourages you to write uncritically, to experiment, to break your time-honored rules of writing just to see what happens. In a first draft, nothing is permanent, and everything is fixable. So stay loose and flexible, and keep your expectations very, very low. ~ Chris Baty

Making the best-seller list is a big deal; it's like being nominated for an Oscar. Hitting No. 1 is like actually winning the award. It's very gratifying. ~ Brad Thor

I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller. ~ Terry Eagleton

To live in a world that requires you to become someone else, being yourself is your best choice and most valuable accomplishment."

-Steven Cuoco ~ Steven Cuoco

Best seller material, and she didn't have to write a single word. ~ A.L. Mabry

There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page. ~ Ian Fleming

The silly antics that would get me in trouble at school have put me on the best-seller list. So I guess the moral here is ignore your teach ... never mind. That's not the moral. Probably. ~ MaryJanice Davidson

I do what I love and what I always dreamed of doing for a living. I write love stories, and I have always had a publisher willing to publish them. I have a sizable and loyal audience. I have made best-seller lists and won awards. What more could anyone ask for? ~ Mary Balogh

So the books have a greater appeal to a British audience, but that hasn't stopped them making best-seller lists in places like Brazil, Japan and at least a dozen other countries. ~ Bernard Cornwell

When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries. ~ MaryJanice Davidson

I tell you, life is extraordinary. A few years ago I couldn't write anything or sell anything, I'd passed the age where you know all the returns are in, I'd had my chance and done my best and failed. And how was I to know the miracle waiting to happen round the corner in late middle age? 84, Charing Cross Road was no best seller, you understand; it didn't make me rich or famous. It just got me hundreds of letters and phone calls from people I never knew existed; it got me wonderful reviews; it restored a self-confidence and self-esteem I'd lost somewhere along the way, God knows how many years ago. It brought me to England. It changed my life. ~ Helene Hanff

If you're looking for lollipops and rainbows while you shop for the latest best seller, you best not come to me. I won't chat you up and tell you how cute your kid is. I won't smile and flirt. I won't stroke your ego about the jewelry you are wearing or the shirt you have on. I will help you find what you need. I will recommend books and hell I even talk about what I liked about one book over another but all that other shit is just not my thing. ~ J.L. Mac

The present moment is the combination of future and past ... so let's live and sometimes, sometimes let's just forget about the rest! ~ Haidji

The 1947 best-seller Modern Woman: The Lost Sex urged that spinsters be barred from teaching children on the grounds of "emotional incompetence." It was the ultimate example of the pendulum swinging - instead of prohibiting the employment of married women as teachers, society now wanted marriage to be mandatory. "A great many children have unquestionably been damaged psychologically by the spinster teacher who cannot be an adequate model of a complete woman either for boys or girls," the authors argued. ~ Gail Collins

If I can hit No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, I'm thinking of having the entire list tattooed on my body somewhere. It would be fabulous. ~ Camilla Lackberg

Windham, but not often. There were no murders in anyone's memory, no rapes or molestations or sudden disappearances. It's a quiet town. Windham was perfect, we thought. Safe and sound, and that's where Veronica and I would grow up. We moved there ten years ago. That was in April 2005. I was nine and my little sister Veronica was almost three. My dad, Dr. Simon Taylor, had made a bunch from the popularity of his book, and it was number four on the best-seller list and still holding fast. I'll bet fifty thousand a month was tumbling in, and Dad had already signed a two million dollar advance on his next book. ~ Peter Gilboy

She could possibly hit the best-seller list if she sold it as a novel, though. ~ Shanna Swendson

If we were a sex manual it'd be a best-seller. ~ Rick Carlisle

You say that like she edited Ulysses," I said. "I don't care!" said my friend. "It was a No. 1 best-seller!" VII. ~ Keith Gessen

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody. ~ John Gimlette

I'm not a best-seller, but through translations, I've accumulated some money. ~ Manuel Puig

There is no sincere stupidity that doesn't create, eventually, its own rationale, conduct, operating procedures, its own critical formulae whereby it may be, in all seriousness, discussed: witness the advertising business. Witness the best-seller list. Areas of idiocy within which various degrees of the spurious are compared. ~ Gilbert Sorrentino

The measure of a great writer is not how many weeks his books spend on the best-seller lists, but how many years his books remain in print after his death. ~ Cal Thomas

It's a great day to write a best-seller. ~ Buffy Andrews

I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. ~ Adriana Trigiani

If you want a good handbag and glasses, it's hard to get something without the brand name on it because it's so important to have the charmed inscription. The only way you do it ... This handbag was the only one in the shop without a charmed inscription. It's just an ordinary bag. I went into the department store in Sloane Square, because I needed a new bag, because my old one lost its handles. Then I found this one, and I said "Why is it so cheap?" and the seller said, "Because it doesn't have a name!" ~ Marina Warner

This was Jonan's boat. She had helped Nan Seller dose his entire crew against the annual diarrhea outbreak known as the winter runs ~ Sarah Zettel

More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is." (We should perhaps bear in mind that the House of Lords is a largely powerless, nonelective institution. It is an arresting fact of British political life that a Briton can enjoy a national platform and exalted status because he is the residue of an illicit coupling 300 years before between a monarch and an orange seller.) ~ Bill Bryson

Salesmanship consists of transferring a conviction by a seller to a buyer. ~ Paul G. Hoffman

Nobody has ever been and most certainly, never would be able to cut the wings of beliefs! Instead, they are nurtured for the needed flight that they give to our otherwise inert lives… ~ Trishala D. Shah

It was doing very well; it was doing particularly well outside of England. It was a very big seller for Carlton Television. But it was getting more and more expensive to do. ~ Derek Jacobi

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.' It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature... books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting to the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian. ~ Arthur E. Bostwick

When they had hurried to the train station with their violin cases, they had drawn almost as many stares as they would on any normal day when their hair was to their knees and sheeting behind them like red silk. A poetic fruit-seller had told them once that they looked like dryads, and they did still, only now they looked like dryads who had tired of snagging their hair on brambles and sliced it all off on the edge of a knife. ~ Laini Taylor

The author writes that the central conflict within journalist and seller of the American way Henry Luce was between his curiosity and his certitude. ~ David Halberstam

The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember th ~ Neil Postman

that is subject to accelerated revenue recognition as a result of aggressive management estimates is one that has "multiple deliverables." In this type of arrangement, the seller provides several distinct, but intermingled deliverables over an extended period of time. For example, wireless telecom companies often package mobile phone service and a cell phone handset together in the same contract. Sometimes the handset is sold to the customer at a greatly discounted price (or even given away for free), as long as the customer also agrees to a two-year service contract. Accounting rules require the seller to allocate a portion of the total contract value to the handset (to be recognized as revenue up front) and a portion to the service contract (to be recognized over the life of the contract). The seller uses assumptions in estimating how to split the revenue between the two deliverables. By changing these assumptions or ~ Howard M. Schilit

The rule in life is like with tennis: One point won't lose you the match, but if you let it get to you, it will. ~ David Seller

Bigger spreads mean bigger gaps between what buyers pay and sellers receive. For example, a spread of 10 cents a share means that the buyer pays $100 more for 1,000 shares than the seller receives. ~ Alex Berenson

Whether a general or a seller, what matters is that you do your job with responsibility. ~ Auliq Ice

We seek your blessings and we seek your support. On one side there is the Shahzada and on the other side there is a tea seller. There is Namdaar and there is a Kamdaar. But we assure that after assuming responsibility we will not rest for a minute. All the time will be for the people. ~ Narendra Modi

We could be the biggest pantyhose seller in America, but we don't want to weaken the link in shoppers' minds between Home Depot and do-it-yourself projects. ~ Bernard Marcus

Speaking of cupcakes, Will wants two dozen off your special menu to take on the road after the wedding."
"The, erm, peach kind?"
"The peach kind," Lindsey said.
"I like the peach kind," Josh said.
Mikey had named them Sex on a Peach. And they were Kimmie's second biggest seller, after the Hairy Dicks, which were coconut cake balls strategically placed with Dahlia's chocolate-covered, ice cream-filled bananas.
And Josh's frown had disappeared, and now he was grinning as if he knew it.
All of it. ~ Jamie Farrell

As has been stated, the purpose of money is to split barter into two parts so that the seller is free to find his source of supply later and elsewhere. This is the sole purpose of money. Any effort to use money to serve another purpose is perversive; and this statement condemns the entire managed money philosophy. ~ E.C. Riegel

What I tend to get from America is very enthusiastic letters and e-mail from librarians and schoolteachers, the gatekeepers, though I hesitate to use that word. I've never been a huge seller. ~ Kate Thompson

A price drop in a good stock is only a tragedy if you sell at that price and never buy more. To me, a price drop is an opportunity to load up on bargains from among your worst performers and your laggards that show promise. If you can't convince yourself 'When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a buyer' and banish forever the fatal thought 'When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a seller,' then you'll never make a decent profit in stocks. ~ Peter Lynch

Outside came in '60. The Edge in '61. All three made Gold, but the biggest seller was Inside. ~ Shelley Berman

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call. ~ Jeanette Winterson

I don't have a seller's remorse about how I've lived. ~ Kevin Costner

What is a price? It is a proposed point of agreement between a buyer and seller. The proposal is the key. It is not a marching order. Past prices represent deals done in history. Current prices represent possible deals in the future. Prices embed vast information about perceived realities: resource availability, consumer demand, cultural biases and habits, speculations about the future. The price is also an amazing tool. It provides an objective basis for accounting and the assessment of profit and loss. Without prices, real prices rooted in real market experience, we'd been lost. ~ Jeffrey Tucker

I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance. ~ James Chanos

In each case, the relative cost of postponing the purchase for buyer and seller determines the intensity of competition between the [past and future] selves of the seller. If the buyer has a lower cost of postponing the purchase (delay, making do with an interior model) than the seller (inventory, staff salaries) the buyer has the bargaining power. ~ Rakesh V. Vohra