The lists may rely on vendors or booksellers reporting the sales figures. The NYTimes list is not compiled by the Book Review staff, but by news staff. The Chronicle now uses information from the American Booksellers Association, so there may be differences between the NYT list and the Chronicle. In general, the Chronicle will be more reflective of local or regional interest. Lists that are titled “Best Books” or “Recommended Books” are compiled by book review staff and are different from best seller lists. Amazon has its own ranking of sales; I don’t know to what extent, if any, Amazon sales are reflected in other Bestseller lists.
Here is some information on how the lists are compiled.
NY Times Bestseller list... methodology from their website...
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/overview.html
About the Best Sellers
A version of this Best Sellers report appears in the March 11, 2012 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings on weekly lists reflect sales for the week ending February 25, 2012.Read a full explanation of our methodology.
Rankings reflect sales reported by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles. The sales venues for print books include independent book retailers; national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; supermarkets, university, gift and discount department stores; and newsstands. E-book rankings reflect sales from leading online vendors of e-books in a variety of popular e-reader formats.
E-book sales are tracked for fiction and general nonfiction titles. E-book sales for advice & how-to books, children's books and graphic books will be tracked at a future date. Titles are included regardless of whether they are published in both print and electronic formats or just one format. E-books available exclusively from a single vendor will be tracked at a future date.
The universe of print book dealers is well established, and sales of print titles are statistically weighted to represent all outlets nationwide. The universe of e-book publishers and vendors is rapidly emerging, and until the industry is settled sales of e-books will not be weighted.
Among the categories not actively tracked at this time are: perennial sellers, required classroom reading, textbooks, reference and test preparation guides, journals, workbooks, calorie counters, shopping guides, comics, crossword puzzles and self-published books.
The appearance of a ranked title reflects the fact that sales data from reporting vendors has been provided to The Times and has satisfied commonly accepted industry standards of universal identification (such as ISBN13 and EISBN13 codes). Publishers and vendors of all ranked titles conformed in timely fashion to The New York Times Best Seller Lists requirement to allow for independent corroboration of sales for that week.
Publisher credits for e-books are listed under the corporate publishing name instead of by publisher's division.
Sales of both print books and e-books are reported confidentially to The New York Times. The Best Seller Lists are prepared by the News Surveys and Election Analysis Department of The New York Times. Royalty Share, a firm that provides accounting services to publishers, is assisting The Times in its corroboration of e-book sales.
An asterisk (*) indicates that a book's sales are barely distinguishable from those of the book above it. A dagger (†) indicates that some retailers report receiving bulk orders.
===================================
Chronicle Bestseller list: http://www.sfgate.com/books/bestsellers/
Bay Area rankings are based on sales in independent bookstores in the Bay Area during the week ending Mar. 04. Rankings are provided by the American Booksellers Association and the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. For more on the ABA, see below.
http://www.nciba.com/
The Northern California Indie Bestseller List, as brought to you by IndieBound and the NCIBA. Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the NCIBA and IndieBound.
Until fall of 2009 the Chronicle compiled its own list -- interesting blog article from a few years ago:
http://francesdinkelspiel.blogspot.com/2009/10/san-francisco-chronicle-changes-its.html
For dozens of years, the San Francisco Chronicle had compiled its own weekly list of local bestsellers. Every Monday, a staff person would call around a dozen or so bookstores to find out which books had sold the most copies the previous week.
But more importantly, McMurtrie came to realize that the regional bestseller list put together by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association was actually more comprehensive than the Chronicle’s list. The NCIBA polls around 55 independent bookstores in the nine-county Bay Area region for their bestsellers, providing a more accurate snapshot of sales.
The NCIBA has revamped the way it calculates bestsellers since then, according to Landon. The list is timelier, with information gathered on Monday for previous week’s sales and posted by Wednesday. The bestseller list is calculating using a point system and is not merely a reflection of the sheer number of books sold.
A book that sells 250 copies in one book store will get points, but not as many points as if that same book sells 25 copies in 10 different book stores, said Landon. Books also get points for being on an individual bookstore’s bestseller list. So the broader a book is selling, the more likely it will make the list. “You don’t have to have a huge book with a huge budget with big author events to make the list,” said Landon.
American Booksellers Assoc. http://bookweb.org/index.html
Independence is a virtue.
Everyone knows one of the greatest things about independent bookstores is their diversity. The Indie Bestseller Lists put that diversity on display. It's produced just two days after the end of the sales-week, and is the most current snapshot of what’s selling in indie bookstores nationwide. Your participation ensures everyone can see what independent booksellers are recommending—and what independent customers are buying. Share the top books in your store with us, and we’ll share them with the rest of the world.
Use the latest Indie Bestseller Lists to create displays, double-check inventory levels of key titles, and find out what your bookselling colleagues are selling in their stores. Post the lists in your store, include them in your newsletter, and share the information with your local media! Available in Word, HTML, and PDF formats.
View the Indie Bestseller Lists.Please contact Pete Reynolds for information about reprinting the Indie Bestseller Lists. Click here for general reprint information.
Report your bestsellers.
The Indie Bestseller Lists are the freshest expression of independent booksellers' handselling prowess. They also demonstrate the strength of the market to the book world. The Lists can remain a success only if all independent bookstores report to them on a regular basis. So please, add your store's voice to the chorus! We've done our best to make it easy. You can report electronically in one of three ways: manual entry, file upload or, the easiest of all, via BookScan. For details and instructions, click here.
========================================
Amazon
About Best Sellers in Books
These lists, updated hourly, contain best-selling items in books. Here you can discover the best books in Amazon Best Sellers, and find the top 100 most popular Amazon books. What’s hot in books today? Take a look at the Amazon Best Sellers in Books list and find the best books in literature, fiction and nonfiction. Explore best sellers in books for mystery and thrillers, romance, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoirs, art and photography, and the best books in cooking, food and wine. Parents looking to buy something for their kids can search best sellers in books for teens, middle graders, and picture books. We also have best-selling travel books, plus a comics and graphic novels best sellers list with the hottest book titles available. For the more serious reader, there’s a business and investing book list for best sellers. Every best sellers in books list is updated every hour. Shopping and finding information for the best books is easy, and you don’t need to search for just best-selling books. Amazon Books has a wide assortment of the best books available. If you’re looking for a book, Amazon Books is the best place to find, discover, and buy it.Secrets of the Amazon Best Seller list (8/10/09)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business-us_business/t/secrets-amazon-best-seller-list/
Excerpts:
It's almost a philosophical riddle: Do sales drive the best-seller list, or do best-sellers get all the sales because buyers see them on the list? As much as we'd like to believe that the crowd picks the best books, a strong presence in retail locations — front-of-store positioning and tempting discounts — still counts a great deal in determining how well a title sells.
…
In the old days, the New York Times best-seller list meant everything. But it doesn't come out until weeks after the sales take place, and it only updates on Sunday. Today's author needs a better, faster sounding board. And she's found it in Amazon's unblinking sales rank, the 24-hour barometer of book sales. Indeed, it's a rare author with self-control who, as soon as the book is published, doesn't obsessively check the list these days, which is updated every hour.
Yet for all that, few people understand how the Amazon list works or its relative importance in the publishing industry. Amazon's method of ranking books remains something of a black box with the fancy word algorithm used to describe it.
….
The list seems to be a series of weighted averages
"I'm not sure the exact number," Kessler says of the weightings, "but my guess is 40 percent hour, 30 percent day, 20 percent week, and 10 percent month. So if you have a huge spike in sales, you don't completely dislodge books that have been in the top 10 or top 100 for months and months. Though you might pass them for a very fun hour."
An Amazon spokeswoman essentially confirms his hunch when she says, "We base rankings on all-time sales, as well as recent sales that are weighted more heavily than older sales, so that our lists are timely and aren't always dominated by all-time best-sellers like Harry Potter."
…..
==================================
USA Today Bestseller list
USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list ranks the 150 top-selling titles each week based on an analysis of sales from U.S. booksellers. Contributors represent a variety of outlets: bookstore chains, independent bookstores, mass merchandisers and online retailers
http://books.usatoday.com/list/index
No comments:
Post a Comment