Let's talk about the NYT bestseller list (a thread): People *care* about this list + according to a 2004 study, it increases book sales. Even if it doesn't, I think it's fair to say that authors dream of hitting that list and it matters to marketing.
The list has often been criticized (for sooo many things), and it's a pretty open secret that it's not really a straight/factual accounting of bestsellers if you were to go strictly by the numbers or volume of sales.
So it annoyed me a little when—in response to recent criticism tied to #PublishingPaidMe —the NYT recently tweeted that the list is not "curated." That strikes me as somewhat disingenuous.
OK, to be fair, I don't think the editors are going through the list just willy-nilly deciding what deserves to be there on a week-to-week basis. But the NYT does set up some very specific parameters that heavily determine what titles will be seen—or not seen—on this list.
For starters, the NYT does not include "perennial sellers, required classroom reading, textbooks, reference and test preparation guides, ebooks available exclusively from a single vendor, journals, workbooks, calorie counters, shopping guides, periodicals and crossword puzzles."
This makes some sense. It's often said The Bible is the bestselling book of all time. Do we need to see The Bible on the NYT list every week? Probably not. (Or: Maybe we do. Imagine what story that might tell, how we'd see the country, if we were confronted with that every week!)
Do you want to see Dr. Seuss's OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO on the list every time graduation rolls around? Or Strunk's ELEMENTS OF STYLE every August? Etc. Although, again, maybe this would tell an important story. I know these are bestsellers b/c I study the industry, others don't.
There are other parameters that I find more demonstrative of the values of the NYT. Why separate out hardcovers and paperbacks? Why separate out audiobooks? Why have a list that combines print + ebook but not include audio—when audio makes up 50%+ of some title sales?
In 2017, the NYT eliminated weekly bestseller lists for graphic novels/manga, as well as mass market paperback, middle-grade ebooks and YA ebooks. Why? Maybe it took them too much time to compile or they didn't like the sort of titles appearing on the lists.
They did bring back some of these lists on a monthly basis, presumably due to reader response or interest. I can't pretend to know or guess at the NYT motivations for anything, but perhaps the amount of work involved in compiling these lists is no trivial matter.
In any event, the NYT entirely did away with (and has not reinstituted) the adult ebook bestseller list, which *self-published authors* were able to hit. Authors figured out a sales formula for cracking the list, sometimes by bundling their work together + selling at a low price.
And guess what: an ebook-only bestseller list likely threatened the prestige of being a NYT bestseller—or that's how it looked to me. Again and again, the NYT has established parameters that prioritize print + bookstores (and de-emphasize Amazon, the biggest US retailer of books)
That makes it much harder for independent and small presses to compete and for self-published authors to compete. So in that sense, the NYT list is definitely curated. It favors books that sell well in particular places, from particular publishers who can get placement.
To prove that: In 2015, according to numbers calculated by Publishers Lunch, 85% of the NYT bestsellers that year were published by one of the Big Five houses. I feel pretty confident in saying that things haven't changed much in the last five years.
On a side note: I can hardly blame Amazon for wanting to create their own bestseller lists, ones that would reflect the volume of both buying and reading activity that the NYT simply doesn't capture. (Of course Amazon lists have their own problems.)
Imagine if the NYT thought more creatively or expansively about what the bestseller list could accomplish or what it could shed light on. I assume it's trying to create a historical record through time that is somehow consistent in what it's calling a bestseller but ...
What if the NYT offered a list of the current bestselling titles published outside of the Big Five? What if it looked at what's selling at BIPOC bookstores? Or being sold to libraries? What if it presented a bestseller list every week focused on a niche category?
Such lists could offer a more insightful look at what communities throughout the US care about or are talking about. Maybe they could be quarterly lists or just special one-offs. Why not stretch and experiment a little? There's an opportunity here to surprise and delight.
Another side note: This is what is so interesting about the @PanoramaProjOrg's lists, which reveal what's in demand at libraries across the country. It surfaces titles you might not see otherwise. panoramaproject.org/panorama-picks
Even if the NYT has little interest in innovation, it'd be nice to see its bestseller lists be more open and accountable to all the ways people read books. Stop segregating audio into a monthly list (WHY do that?). Treat formats more equitably. Don't fetishize hardcover. /end
