With self-published ebooks regularly claiming at least some positions on major bestseller lists, we wanted to move past random data points to some kind of regular monitoring. After weeks of private experimentation, we are ready to make our new process transparent. Tapping our existing stream of aggregated bestsellers lists at PublishersMarketplace (which cover multiple lists from 9 sources), we have added tagging to identify self-published titles. The new output is viewable in a couple of ways. The new PM Self-Published Bestsellers list shows all of the self-published titles to make at least one list we track — and applies a […]
Bestseller Radar
Nielsen’s Top 10 Authors Since 2001
Based on “real Nielsen data” (e.g. print sales), the company has published a list of the top-selling authors since 2001 (along with their biggest-selling title): 1. James Patterson (1st to Die) 2. J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) 3. Nora Roberts (Red Lily) 4. Dr Seuss (Oh, the Places You’ll Go!) 5. John Grisham (A Painted House) 6. Stephenie Meyer (Twilight) 7. Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) 8. Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) 9. Janet Evanovich (One for the Money) 10. Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) 11. Stephen King (Dreamcatcher) Little, Brown says Patterson has had […]
Pastor Mark Driscoll Apologizes for Using Result Source to Manipulate Bestseller Lists
You may have already been following the story in which it was revealed earlier this month that Result Source was hired by the Mars Hill Church in Seattle to manipulate bestseller lists on behalf on their Pastor Mark Driscoll’s book REAL MARRIAGE (co-authored with his wife). At first, a church spokesman defended the move: “Mars Hill has made marketing investments for book releases and sermon series, along with album releases, events, and church plants, much like many other churches, authors, and publishers who want to reach a large audience. We will explore any opportunity that helps us to get that message […]
Amazon’s March Picks, and Kindle First Tops their List Again
Amazon’s March books of the month were posted over the weekend, with Phil Klay’s Redeployment as their Spotlight pick, and Nickolas Butler’s Shotgun Lovesons as the featured debut. Their selections include Atavist Books launch title, the digital-only novella by Karen Russell, Sleep Donation (it releases towards the end of the month, on March 25). The rest of the March picks: Boy, Snow, Bird, Helen Oyeyemi Blood Will Out, Walter Kirn Savage Harvest, Carl Hoffman Bark: Stories, Lorrie Moore Sleep Donation, Karen Russell All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu The Naked Future, Patrick Tucker The Cairo Affair, Olen Steinhauer The Enchanted, Rene Denfeld Speaking of Amazon, before you read another spate […]
Kindle Worlds, Kindle Words
Amazon announced more licenses for their Kindle Worlds fan fiction program, including GI Joe (from Hasbro); the TV shows Pretty Little Liars and Ravenswood (expanding their relationship with Warner’s Alloy Entertainment); and works from authors Markus Sakey and Theresa Ragan. The Seattle Times noticed an interesting restriction in Hasbro’s license. The Rhode-Island based company requires that “G.I. Joe’s comrade, Snake Eyes, cannot be a portrayed as a fan of the New York Yankees.” The paper takes a broader look at Amazon Publishing in connection with the announcement. The new non-specific statistic is Amazon Publishing head Jeff Belle saying that “the […]
The Truth About 2013’s Top 100 Books: Not A Single, Self-Published Title
In today’s fragmented world of incomplete sales data — largely because we do not have any public disclosure of ebook unit sales on a title-level basis — USA Today’s annual list of the top 100 bestsellers performs a more important function than ever. That’s because they are the only compiler of bestseller lists to issue an annual chart that combines both ebook and print sales data from most major sellers. More particularly, their dataset includes Kindle sales but puts them in the context of the overall market, so you can differentiate between the storyline Amazon popularizes about what’s selling in […]