We mentioned earlier in the week that we have all kinds of new things in the works in our development pipeline and idea laboratory. Here is just a taste of one little thing we are playing around with. Our comprehensive bestseller database tracks 10 lists all the time (and has well over half-a-million records from more than a decade) — some of which we already supply to publisher portals under license through a private API. That means we can create a broadly elastic set of bestseller-share calculators (and output lists of bestsellers by house, also available through a private API), […]
Bestseller Radar
NYT to Make Printed Middle Grade and YA Bestseller Lists Hardcover Only
The New York Times is making what it calls “a significant change” in their children’s bestseller lists, starting with the issue dated August 30. The middle grade and young adult lists will count hardcover sales only going forward – positioned as similar to the adult fiction and nonfiction lists. The paper says the goal is to “better reflect the exciting range of novels for children and teenagers that are newly published.” Separate paperback and ebook bestseller lists for both middle grade and YA books will appear online only, rather than books from across all platforms. As a result, in the first set […]
Surprise Bestseller: Self-Published Picture Book that Prompts Yawns to Put Kids to Sleep
Swedish psychologist Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin’s crude-looking self-published picture book The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep: A New Way Of Getting Children To Sleep finds itself at the top of Amazon‘s bestseller list more than a year-and-a-half after publication. It seems to have caught on in the UK first, drawing media attention that spread to the US and has lifted sales here within the last week. (It’s currently No. 1 on Amazon’s hourly list and No. 30 at Barnes & Noble, but until recently was selling just low single digits per week according to Nielsen Bookscan.) Director of Books and Entertainment […]
2014 Bestseller Lists From Amazon, Indie Booksellers
Amazon announced its Bestselling Books of 2014 package — including an overall top 20, combining print and kindle sales, along with separate top 100 lists for print books and ebooks. Remember, however, that these promoted lists are for new releases in 2014 only. To find the true “bestselling books of the year,” regardless of when published, you need to burrow into Amazon’s bestseller archives for print and ebooks: There it becomes clear that John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars was really their bestselling title of the year, claiming the No. 1 Kindle slot and No. 3 print book slot (after StrenghtsFinder 2.0 and […]
Amazon Publishing Is Firm No. 2 At Kindle Store
Amazon Publishing vice president Jeff Belle reported in his September 2014 update letter that in the US, In the US, “Amazon Publishing now ranks as the #2 publisher on the Kindle platform, based on paid copies (this means royalty-generating copies, and includes books sold a la carte, or through programs such as Kindle Unlimited or the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library).” Presumably that means only Penguin Random House sells more ebooks through the Kindle store. (Note carefully this applies to ebooks only.) Kindle Unlimited likely plays a strong role in those counts. As we have shown through multiple analyses of the Kindle […]
NYT to Add 12 New Monthly Bestseller Lists and Feature Selected Niche Lists In Print
The New York Times will start offering a new set of focused, monthly bestseller lists as of the September 21 issue of the NYT Book Review, and will continue to roll out new lists into 2015, adding 12 new lists in all. More importantly, they will at least a couple of the new “niche lists” a week in the print edition. The press release says four, but the 9/21 package includes two of the new lists. The fine print explains, “This page features a rotating combination of weekly best sellers — Paperback Trade Fiction, Mass-Market Fiction, Paperback Nonfiction, Advice, How-To and […]