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Alex · 07-23-2007, 11:17 AM

All of the national best seller lists have to make compromises in how they put it together (there just isn't an infrastructure that can accurately report book sales across all channels). Wal-Mat, for example, is missing from almost every sales tracking system and while Wal-Mart may not be sell a lot of titles they sell a lot of what titles they have. If you want a pure sales system approach (more like Billboard's list) you might want to keep an eye on Neilson BookScan which attempts to capture all sales (but they still estimate the only get 75% or so). Your library might have access to the raw information.

That said it is certainly politicized to a huge extent. But such things, if they become important always are.

The Howard Stern thing isn't true. Private Parts debuted at #1 on the list October 24, 1993 (stayed on for 20 weeks) and Miss America also debuted at #1 on November 26, 1995, staying on the list for 17 weeks. Stern created some controversy when he accused the NYT of rigging the list when Colin Powell's autobiography bumped him out of the #1 spot.

I also generally use the big best seller lists as a guide to what I don't want to read. If 500,000 people go see a movie I'll want to go see it. If 500,000 people read the same book I'm afraid I'm 90% confident I'll think it trash.

The problems with the list are really big on the non-fiction list where sales are smaller and alternate outlets much bigger. The #1 selling book each year is probably some reference material like the Physician's Desk Reference (and let's not forget the Bible though some here would disagree with the list on which I would put it) but its sales don't show in normal channels.

And while it may attempt to chronicle what people are buying, it doesn't necessarily show what people are reading. After all, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was on the list for 109 weeks and relatively few people who bought the book ever actually read the book.

(Sorry for prattling on, we spent about 2 weeks talking about best seller lists, primarily the NYT in one of my collection development classes back in library school. It was interesting to get down into the innards of it. The NYT Best Seller List is still very much an artifact of 1950s technology.)

07-23-2007, 11:17 AM	#9
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	All of the national best seller lists have to make compromises in how they put it together (there just isn't an infrastructure that can accurately report book sales across all channels). Wal-Mat, for example, is missing from almost every sales tracking system and while Wal-Mart may not be sell a lot of titles they sell a lot of what titles they have. If you want a pure sales system approach (more like Billboard's list) you might want to keep an eye on Neilson BookScan which attempts to capture all sales (but they still estimate the only get 75% or so). Your library might have access to the raw information. That said it is certainly politicized to a huge extent. But such things, if they become important always are. The Howard Stern thing isn't true. Private Parts debuted at #1 on the list October 24, 1993 (stayed on for 20 weeks) and Miss America also debuted at #1 on November 26, 1995, staying on the list for 17 weeks. Stern created some controversy when he accused the NYT of rigging the list when Colin Powell's autobiography bumped him out of the #1 spot. I also generally use the big best seller lists as a guide to what I don't want to read. If 500,000 people go see a movie I'll want to go see it. If 500,000 people read the same book I'm afraid I'm 90% confident I'll think it trash. The problems with the list are really big on the non-fiction list where sales are smaller and alternate outlets much bigger. The #1 selling book each year is probably some reference material like the Physician's Desk Reference (and let's not forget the Bible though some here would disagree with the list on which I would put it) but its sales don't show in normal channels. And while it may attempt to chronicle what people are buying, it doesn't necessarily show what people are reading. After all, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was on the list for 109 weeks and relatively few people who bought the book ever actually read the book. (Sorry for prattling on, we spent about 2 weeks talking about best seller lists, primarily the NYT in one of my collection development classes back in library school. It was interesting to get down into the innards of it. The NYT Best Seller List is still very much an artifact of 1950s technology.)
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