(by 4 people)
In the movie business, you have an indisputable weekly list of the top-ten grossing films (and the last five are turkeys). In music, you've got the Top 40 playlist, and the Soundscan 100, based on actual sales from throughout the business.
Books, however, are a much more complicated beast. For starters, no one really knows what the bestselling books of the week are and exactly what they sold. Pretty amazing, isn't it? But there is no system that gathers this data in a comprehensive way.
Partly as a result, lots of news organization offer their own weekly bestseller lists--ironic, actually, since there is as much fiction and art to these lists as there is journalism and fact. In truth, most of the many national bestsellers lists are based on the same basic data pool, and most of the bestselling books today are driven by the major national chains (Barnes & Noble, Borders, and following far behind Books-A-Million) and the big mass merchandisers (Wal-Mart; Costco; Target; etc.). Independent stores, even the best and most vibrant, have little impact on the marketplace as a whole anymore. (The only available statistical estimate has indies comprising less than 9 percent of the market overall, and bestsellers are not what they sell best.)
I'm still working on this; more to come.
This is a guide to the world of book bestseller lists and what they mean.
New Link List Module
- NYT Bestsellers
- The home page for all the NY Times Bestseller lists. Still, just barely, the best-known and most presitigious set of bestseller lists--ironically because they are the least accurate and most "engineered" lists out there.
Editors and publishers, particularly those who issue "fancy" and "important" books, like it that way because the NYT lists can make the casual observer think that "literary" and "weighty" books are selling as well as commercial fiction and popular culture-driven books.
Any time something sells too well, the folks at the Times carve out a special ghetto list to get it out of the way--thus was born the Advice, How-To, Misc. lists for regular books that are just too popular, or the children's lists, to keep Harry Potter and newcomers likes Christopher Paolini from taking all the slots away from "real" writers.
To make the people behind books that are really selling well at all happy the Times created the "extended list." Many titles will become extended bestsellers by selling a few hundred copies in a week. - WSJ Bestsellers
- If you have a subscription, this page will lead you to the weekly Wall Street Journal bestsellers, updated on Fridays. You'll have to scroll down to bring up the lists. (They give each week's lists a unique URL.)
- USA Today Bestsellers
- They update their data every Thursday. This is the only list that ranks books of all formats (paperbacks; harcovers; fiction; nonfiction; etc.) in a single list of 150 titles, instead of multiple, shorter list. As a result, it's often dominated by paperbacks, and overlaps less with other lists.
One important fun fact; USA Today is the only bestseller chart compiler that says Wal-Mart provides them with data. - Book Standard (aka Nielsen Bookscan)
- This family of charts is the only group that draws on data from Nielsen Bookscan--which is the only organization (and therefore the only set of bestseller charts) that draws on actual point-of-sale data, rather than reports from individual retailers and chains. The only problem is, Bookscan covers around 65% to 70% of the business. (They don't even know the actual percentage, since no one really understands the whole landscape of places that sell books.) It under-represents certain segments of the market--like Christian bookstores--more heavily.
These public charts don't share actual sales data (e.g. the number of copies recorded as sold in a given week). They save that for publishing companies willing to pay anywhere from about $50,000 up to seven figures annually, depending on the company's size.
Can you get access to this data?
No. Or not unless you have a friend who works at a house that has an account. We call this service Friendscan. - Barnes and Noble Stores
- Barnes and Noble actually posts two different bestseller lists at their web site. This is the one you want, since it reflects weekly sales at their stores nationwide (selling about $4 billion in books annually) rather than their hourly Top 100 list, which reflects sales just as their web site (selling abnout $400 million annually, or less than 25 percent of what Amazon sells).
- Wal-Mart.com Bestsellers
- Finally, savvy sales-watchers will always keep an eye on Wal-Mart. The company is famous for not sharing its sales data, but as the world's biggest retailer, everything they do is significant. It's actually not clear if this is a list of web-only bestsellers, or chainwide bestsellers. But anything selling well at a part of Wal-Mart is important.
Books About Bestsellers
Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999
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The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories from Authors and the Editors, Agents, and Booksellers Behind Them
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Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 07/26/2008)
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The #1 New York Times Bestseller: Intriguing Facts About the 484 Books That Have Been #1 New York Times Bestsellers Since the First List in 1942.
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Bestseller Index: All Books, by Author, on the Lists of Publishers Weekly and the New York Times Through 1990
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Amazon Price: $115.00 (as of 07/26/2008)
In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
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IDENTICAL STRANGERS, by Elyse Schein & Paula Bernstein (Random House)
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