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What Counts as a Bestseller?

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mountaineer:
What Counts as a Bestseller?
Oct. 11, 2022
By Jordan Pruett
--- Quote ---In 1983, William Blatty—author of The Exorcist—sued the New York Times.1 His lawsuit alleged that the Times had incorrectly excluded his latest novel, Legion (a sequel to The Exorcist), from its bestseller list—the coveted ranking that purports to show the books that have sold the most copies that week in the United States. According to Blatty’s lawyers, Legion had sold enough copies to warrant a spot on the list, so its absence was due to negligence or fraud, for which Blatty was entitled to compensation. The Times countered with what might sound like a surprising admission: the bestseller list is not mathematically objective; it is editorial content, which is protected by the First Amendment. The court ruled in favor of the New York Times.

The Blatty case draws attention to a fundamental truth about bestseller lists, one that often gets forgotten amid the drama of their weekly publication: they are not a neutral window into what the public is really reading. Rather, they reflect editorial decisions about how and what to count. Changes on the list might reflect changes in counting procedure, rather than changes in the market. Despite their lack of neutrality—or, perhaps, because of it—these editorial and counting decisions can have a big effect on which books and authors get the honor of appearing on the list; in turn, they shape the public’s perception of what it is reading and what it should consider reading next.  ...

The occasion for this analysis is the recent publication of a dataset I compiled that records every book that made it onto the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list between 1931 and 2020. The dataset allows one to ask aggregate questions about the history of popular literature in the United States. For example, the following visualization shows which genres have appeared on the list most frequently (among those bestsellers for which a library record could be identified).2 As can be seen, over nearly a century, the lists’ two biggest genres are “historical” and “detective and mystery,” by a fairly large margin.


...  So, what, then, is a bestseller? It seems like the answer should be simple—it’s just a book that sold the best! But, as we’ve seen, the truth turns out to be more complicated. Since novels are published in many different formats and sold at many different kinds of stores, decisions must be made about how and what to count. This is not to say that bestseller lists are arbitrary, or that they can’t be trusted. Rather, it’s just to point out that editorial decisions may favor some books over others.  ...
--- End quote ---
Entire article at Public Books

Polly Ticks:
Strangely enough, using the 'editorial decision' criteria, Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" didn't make the cut.  Who could have guessed?

Kamaji:
Like everything else at the NYT, their "best seller" list is simply disguised political propaganda.  Not worth the paper it's printed on.

Fishrrman:
None of this best-seller stuff is gonna matter for very much longer.

Go to a place called "z-lib.org"
Type in a title or author.
What format do you want to download?

mountaineer:

--- Quote from: Fishrrman on October 14, 2022, 10:36:52 pm ---None of this best-seller stuff is gonna matter for very much longer.
Go to a place called "z-lib.org"
Type in a title or author.
What format do you want to download?

--- End quote ---
Not for me. The books I read are all printed on paper.

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