As the NYTpicker kerfuffle dies down I’m left with this morbid curiosity about the New York Times—specifically their bestseller list.
The List, as it’s called, is the most iconic and well-known bestseller ranking we have and yet no one really knows how it works. Granted, I’ve been swinging from the lower rungs of the extended list for nearly a year, so I’m grateful for all the ink I can get, but still, I find it hard to find validity in something no one really understands.
By that I mean, as authors, we’re all playing this game that we know is rigged—the deck is stacked. We might win. We might lose. But no matter what, the house never reveals their hole cards.
Plus there’s the public misconception that the NYT bestseller list is a reflection of actual sales—ummm, kinda.
I get a Bookscan report of the top 100 fiction books each week (#73 this week, thank you) and the sales metrics sometimes correlate with the Time’s list and well, just as often they don’t. Occasionally you’ll see two books with similar weekly sales on Bookscan, but on the Times list one might be ranked #2, and the other #19.
How’s that happen?
Well, it’s speculated that sales reports of certain stores are weighted (loaded, like dice). In theory that makes total sense, since a small indie store’s sales data should be able to compare to, oh say, a giant like Target. But, I’ve also heard that the dice might be loaded the other way, discounting the sales metrics of large discount retailers. Why? No one knows. Perhaps the NYT feels the opinions of people that buy books at Wal-Mart are less valuable than those that buy books elsewhere. I’d hate to think it came down to stuff like that but in the absence of a real explanation we’re left wondering—trade secrets and all.
What we do know is that the New York Times Bestseller list is sales data + something. That something is a mystery. Therefore I submit for your consideration the following theories:
- Drunken chimp throws darts at a spinning wheel to augment sales data.
- Quija Board is used every full moon, contacting the spirit of Thomas Pynchon. Wait, he’s still alive. Sorry, my bad.
- über-librarian, Nancy Pearl, takes the list and rearranges it any way she damn well pleases. I for one welcome our new librarian overlords.
- Frustrated with their failed attempts to convert the United States to the metric system, the Illuminati have chosen to get even by unleashing their doomsday weapon: Dan Brown.
- Vampires (for real).
- Books with literary gimmicks—1000 pages with no paragraph breaks, chapters without any vowels, etc—get to pass Go, collect $200.
- NYT book reviewer hides secret shame, “I never learned to read.”
The New York Times Bestseller List. What do you think?
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In the 80s Harlan Ellison made writing fiction a performance art. He would take a story prompt from a stranger (or just as often a celebrity) and occupy a storefront window, where he would sit for hours at an Olympus typewriter writing a short story. Those pages would then be distributed to audience members that afternoon. (I have a signed copy of Broken Glass hanging in my office, written in the window of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore in Boston, circa 1981).
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