Editorial Page, Biased Reporting Not the Only Things Amiss at NYT

posted by Tom Tyler, Editor

How often have you seen the words, "14 Weeks on the NYT Bestsellers List", emblazoned in blood-curdling graphics across countless dust jackets sprawling about on the leftovers rack at your local bookery?

How often have you heard a misty-eyed scribbler and would-be artiste pray aloud to the muses with his or her dream to "land on the NYT Bestsellers List!"

The NYT Bestsellers List is the most recognized list of it kind, an icon of the writing/publishing/reading world, a status symbol, a writer's fantasy, the dollar signs in a greedy agent's eyes!

Just having your book make the list is, potentially at least, worth a cool million or two in extra book sales, future book contracts and possible movie deals.


It is also, if the post linked here is anywhere near correct, one of the biggest marketing scamolas in United States history!

In what booksquare at booksquare.com described as a process "akin to choosing the homecoming queen from just the cheerleading squad" :

booksellers use a form provided by Times editors. The form lists titles the editors think are likely to sell well. Although there is space below for writing in additional titles, this practice has been controversial.

Booksquare continued with a Stanford U study:

So how many books do you actually need to sell to make it onto, say, the Times list? There is no defined threshold, but according to the Stanford study, one book made the hardcover fiction list selling only 2,108 copies a week; more typically, the median weekly sales figure in the study was 18,717. And most books can’t keep even these modest sale rates up for long: Sales generally peak during a book’s second week on the list and then steadily decline. Over a period of six months, the median best seller in the Stanford study averaged weekly sales of just over 3,600 copies.

And then booksquare reported on booksquares own eye-opening results:

Wow, we thought, wow. Then we did some research. After carefully approaching a multi-published author (dark alley, sunglasses, trench coats) and guaranteeing her complete anonymity, we discovered something scary: her first book, released in the final two weeks of the accounting period (publishing still clings to the quaint semi-annual statement process), had net sales of over 15,000 units. Imagine what a full month would have revealed. Ultimate sales were close to 100,000 copies [correction: estimated print run was 100k; actual sales were closer to 81,000]. Net. Anonymous Author was a bestseller.

Honestly, there is just no end to the NYT and its antics!