As a followup to Monday’s what-makes-a-bestseller, we have today’s what-makes-a-surefire-bestseller-fail. If a book has all the markers of success, including positive reviews, cover stories, media saturation, and presumably, a decently written story, how can it fail?

I’ll concede the point that book review sections don’t deserve to be whacked. But why doesn’t discourse result in sales? If Mr. Ford is right, then shouldn’t smart, alert readers have been lining up to buy the Ferris novel? Something doesn’t compute.

“Frankly, your question is depressing me,” Ms. Arthur, who made a pre-emptive bid for the book in the fall of 2005, said. “The book is profitable. It’s gaining more of an audience every day, slowly. Should it have been a bestseller? Probably. I don’t know why it wasn’t.”

I don’t, either. It used to be that books had the shelf-life of a container of yogurt. Nowadays it seems more like hamburger meat. If a book doesn’t make it to the New York Times bestseller list within the first several days of arrival, it never will. Even “Heyday,” Kurt Andersen’s hugely hyped historical novel that also garnered cover-boy treatment in the Times, only lasted a couple of weeks on the list before falling away. Interestingly — and not coincidentally — much of the commercial fiction that lasts the longest on the Times’s list doesn’t get reviewed at all. Does that mean book buyers are less interested in discourse, and more interested in the latest Jodi Picoult? Apparently.

Part of the problem may be that bookstores don’t pay close enough attention to reviews. I went to look for “Then We Came to the End” at the Lincoln Square Barnes & Noble the day after the Times review, and experienced the kind of scenario that leads authors into years of costly psychotherapy. No one knew where to find it. Three clerks and 10 minutes later, I’d bought one of the store’s last three copies. At that moment it occurred to me: What if bookstores created sections devoted to that week’s best-reviewed books? Or posted positive reviews alongside the books themselves? That way, book reviews (even those that appeared only online) would be easily accessible to those most likely to buy books — people already browsing in the bookstore. Right now, bookstores place all their marketing muscle behind bestseller lists, meaning that prize positions get awarded to those who’ve already won the horse race. Even movie theaters operate according to more democratic principles than that. Shouldn’t good bookstore placement go to good books? Just a thought.

You mean, behave like an independent bookstore? How radical! I have a better idea — disband the bix bog stores and just leave people who love selling books to do it. I know it’s crazy, but I think the “love” and “dedication” angles just might work.