New York Times Bestseller List

''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times bestsellers since the first list, 50 years ago'', Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1992. Since October 12, 1931, ''The New York Times Book Review'' has published the list weekly. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and non-fiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.

The list is based on a proprietary method that uses sales figures, other data and internal guidelines that are unpublished—how the ''Times'' compiles the list is a trade secret. In 1983 (as part of a legal argument), the ''Times'' stated that the list is not mathematically objective but rather editorial content. In 2017, a ''Times'' representative said that the goal is that the lists reflect authentic best sellers. The list has been a source of controversy. When the ''Times'' believes a book has reached the list in a suspicious way—such as through bulk purchases—the book's entry on the list is marked with a dagger symbol (†).

History

Although the first best seller list in America was published in 1895, in '' The Bookman'', a best seller list was not published in ''The New York Times'' until October 12, 1931, 36 years later, with little fanfare. It listed five fiction and four non-fiction books for New York City only. The next month, the list was expanded to eight cities, each with its own list. By the early 1940s, fourteen city-lists were included. A national list was created on April 9, 1942, in the Sunday ''New York Times Book Review'' as a supplement to the Monday edition regular city lists. The national list was ranked according to how many times the book appeared in the city lists. Eventually the city lists were eliminated, leaving only the national ranking list, which was compiled according to "reports from leading booksellers in 22 cities". Ranking by bookseller sales figures continues today, although the process has remained proprietary.

By the 1950s, ''The Times''s list had become the leading best-seller list for book professionals to monitor, along with that of ''Publishers Weekly''. In the 1960s and 1970s, shopping-mall chain bookstores B. Dalton, Crown Books, and Waldenbooks came to the forefront with a business model of selling newly published best-sellers with mass-market appeal. They used the best-selling status of titles to market the books and not just as a measure of sales, thus placing increased emphasis on the ''New York Times'' list for book readers and book sellers.

As shown in the graph below, the number of titles achieving the number one spot has grown consistently over the years, ranging from fewer than 10 in the 1970s to the high thirties in the past decade. This graph represents fiction titles only. Years with smaller numbers means one or more titles dominated as major best sellers, notably ''The Da Vinci Code'' in 2003 and 2004, ''Fifty Shades of Grey'' in 2012 and ''Where the Crawdads Sing'' in 2019.

Composition

The list is compiled by the editors of the "News Surveys" department, not by ''The New York Times Book Review'' department, where it is published. It is based on weekly sales reports obtained from selected samples of independent and chain bookstores and wholesalers throughout the United States. The sales figures are widely believed to represent books that have actually been sold at retail, rather than wholesale, as the ''Times'' surveys booksellers in an attempt to better reflect what is purchased by individual buyers. Some books are flagged with a dagger indicating that a significant number of bulk orders had been received by retail bookstores.

''The New York Times'' reported in 2013 that "we enerally do nottrack the sales of classic literature," and thus, for example, new translations of Dante's ''Inferno'' would not be found on the bestseller list.

The exact method for compiling the data obtained from the booksellers is classified as a trade secret. Book Review staff editor Gregory Cowles explained the method "is a secret both to protect our product and to make sure people can't try to rig the system. Even in the Book Review itself, we don't know (the news surveys department's) precise methods." In 1992, the survey encompassed over 3,000 bookstores as well as "representative wholesalers with more than 28,000 other retail outlets, including variety stores and supermarkets." By 2004, the number was 4,000 bookstores as well as an unstated number of wholesalers. Data is adjusted to give more weight to independent book stores, which are underrepresented in the sample.

The lists are divided among fiction and non-fiction, print and e-book, paperback and hardcover; each list contains 15 to 20 titles. The lists have been subdivided several times. "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous" debuted as a list of five on January 1, 1984. It was created because advice best-sellers were sometimes crowding the general non-fiction list. Its inaugural number one bestseller, ''The Body Principal'' by Victoria Principal, had been number 10 and number 12 on the non-fiction lists for the two preceding weeks. In July 2000, the "Children's Best Sellers" was created after the Harry Potter series had stayed in the top spots on the fiction list for an extended period of time. The children's list was printed monthly until February 13, 2011, when it was changed to once an issue (weekly). In September 2007, the paperback fiction list was divided into "trade" and "mass-market" sections, in order to give more visibility to the trade paperbacks that were more often reviewed by the newspaper itself. In November 2010, ''The New York Times'' announced it would be tracking e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction starting in early 2011. "RoyaltyShare, a San Diego-based company that tracks data and aggregates sales information for publishers, will ... provide -bookdata". The two new e-book lists were first published with the February 13, 2011, issue, the first tracks combined print and e-book sales, the second tracks e-book sales only (both lists are further sub-divided into Fiction and Non-fiction). In addition a third new list was published on the web only, which tracks combined print sales (hardcover and paperback) in fiction and nonfiction. On December 16, 2012, the children's chapter books list was divided into two new lists: middle-grade (ages 8–12) and young adult (age 12–18), both which include sales across all platforms (hard, paper and e-book).

Statistics

According to an EPJ Data Science study that used big data to analyze every ''New York Times'' bestselling book from 2008 to 2016, of the 100,000 new, hardcover print books published each year, fewer than 500 make it on to ''The New York Times Best Seller'' list (0.5 percent). Most novels (26 percent) appear on the list for only one week. To make the list, it is estimated that novels sell from 1,000 to 10,000 copies per week, depending on competition. Median sales fluctuate between 4,000 and 8,000 in fiction, and 2,000–6,000 in nonfiction. The majority of ''New York Times'' bestselling books sell from 10,000 to 100,000 copies in their first year.

During the period studied (6 August 2008 to 10 March 2016), Dan Brown's book ''The Lost Symbol'' held the record with 3 million copies sold in one year followed by ''The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest'' by Stieg Larsson and '' Go Set a Watchman'' by Harper Lee which sold 1.6 million copies each. In nonfiction, more than half of the hardcover books that make the list are in the biography category. The autobiography of George W. Bush, ''Decision Points'', sold the most copies in one year followed by the biography ''Steve Jobs'' by Walter Isaacson.

Criticisms

The list has been criticized by authors, publishers, book industry executives, and others for not providing an accurate accounting of true best-seller status. These criticisms have been ongoing ever since the list originated. A book industry report in the 1940s found that best-seller lists were a poor indicator of sales, since they were based on misleading data and were only measuring fast sales (see "fast sale" criticism below). A 2004 report quoted a senior book marketing executive who said the rankings were "smoke and mirrors"; while a report in ''Book History'' found that many professionals in the book industry "scoffed at the notion that the lists are accurate".

Specific criticisms include:

*Fast sales. A book that never makes the list can actually outsell books on the best-seller list. This is because the best-seller list reflects sales in a given week, not total sales. Thus, one book may sell heavily in a given week, making the list, while another may sell at a slower pace, never making the list, but selling more copies over time.
*Double counting. By including wholesalers in the polls along with retail bookstores, books may be double-counted. Wholesalers report how much they sell to retailers, and retailers report how much they sell to customers, thus there can be overlap with the same reported book being sold twice within a given time frame. In addition, retailers may return books to wholesalers months later if they never sell, thus resulting in a "sale" being reported that never came to fruition. For example, mass-market paperbacks can see as high as 40% return rates from the retailer back to the wholesaler.
*Manipulation by authors and publishers. In 1956, author Jean Shepherd created the fake novel ''I, Libertine'' to illustrate how easy it was to manipulate the best-seller lists based on demand, as well as sales. Fans of Shepherd's radio show planted references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to claims of it being on the ''Times'' list. Author Jacqueline Susann ('' Valley of the Dolls'') attempted to "butter-up" ''Times''-reporting booksellers and personally bought large quantities of her own book. Author Wayne Dyer ('' Your Erroneous Zones'') purchased thousands of copies of his own book. Al Neuharth (''Confessions of an S. O. B.''), former head of Gannett Company

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