Bestseller Radar

There are a few updates on the big paring of the New York Times bestseller lists that we covered yesterday. Following our observations noting a few significant changes in the posted methodology (including the elimination of weighting sales from indie bookstores, and allowing the counting of sales from Amazon-exclusive ebooks), a NYT spokesperson confirmed to us that indeed “the methodology was updated to reflect changes to the lists.” A follow-up asking for confirmation that they have dropped the ban on counting certain prosaic types of evergreen nonfiction was not answered, but on Twitter yesterday NYTBR editor Pamela Paul did write, “Just to be […]

The New York Times substantially revised its bestseller lists as of the editions dated February 5 (covering sales through January 21), which were sent out to subscribers on Wednesday afternoon. Where there were once 240 weekly slots in all — 190 regular and 50 extended — now is pared back to 130 positions. The list for mass market fiction and dedicated lists for ebooks only — for both fiction and nonfiction — have been eliminated entirely, which some sectors may consider a double blow, since many fiction titles that used to sell well in the mass market had migrated to primarily digital […]

You may recall that we recently introduced tools to track “bestseller share” by house, looking at the “slots” on the NYT printed bestseller lists. In our January post, we established five-year benchmarks by publisher as well, to have some basis for comparison going forward. With the first quarter of 2016 completed, we are ready to start following the bestseller landscape through the year. By the first results, the five largest houses extended their dominance of the NYT’s charts to new levels in the beginning of the year. All other houses combined claimed under 6 percent of the NYT slots, with […]