[PW] claim--"New York Times Bestseller"...

[Dan Clinton]

Once upon a time I used to report sales to the NYT for the weekly
lists. I don't know when they started printing the entire list of
titles they were tracking, but only the top 10 (later 15) actually
count as NYT bestsellers. The rest are simply on their watch list --
sometimes identified by a staffer, sometimes suggested by a
bookseller. It was -- and probably still is -- a rather arcane
process, a compilation from retail stores and wholesalers.

The fact that the book made it to the 20s three weeks in a row shows
that someone noticed that it was selling -- at least for those 3
weeks. That the NYT was tracking it is worth bragging rights, I
suppose, even if they're stretching the truth a bit. The fact is it
can take surprisingly few sales to make it on the watch list. NYT is
very careful never to print the sales numbers with the list.

On 1/23/08, Jeanne Schramm <jeanne.schramm at gmail.com> wrote:
> I notice on the following sample NYT Bestseller list:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/books/bestseller/0127bestpapernonfiction.html
> that the titles are listed 1 thru 20, and then "also selling" titles are
> numbered 21 thru 35.
> On Jan 23, 2008 10:53 AM, Kevin O'Kelly <rkokelly at yahoo.com> wrote:


-- 
Dan Clinton
US Census Bureau Library
Washington, DC

"A well-read fool is the most pestilent of blockheads." --Leszczynski Stanislaus