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Yeah, I Googled around a bit on that, and saw the 1 in 220 number mentioned a few times, but never any source for that statistic. It looks like somebody made it up, and other people are just requoting that person without verifying it.
Well, I hope I'm one of those 1 in 220 people.
...What? I actually have to write a book?
But seriously, in 2017 there were over a million self-published books alone (
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), not to mention all of the other books put out by publishers. Considering that the maximum possible number of NY Times best sellers in a year is 3,120 (4 categories * 15 per category * 52 times per year), and it's usually far lower than that due to overlap between categories and books on the list for multiple weeks, then the odds are probably closer to 1 in 500 than 1 in 220. (And 1 in 500 is probably still better odds than it really is.)
(Apologies for going off topic, but unlikely claims without sources or verification are a bit of a pet-peeve of mine.)