The New York Times Best Seller list

• 1. A Secret Formula

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  The New York Times Best Seller list is built on a formula that the newspaper's own book editors cannot see. Gregory Cowles, a staff editor at the Book Review, defended that secrecy. He said the method "is a secret both to protect our product and to make sure people can't try to rig the system." He also admitted that "Even in the Book Review itself, we don't know (the news surveys department's) precise methods."

  Yet authors, publishers and readers treat the ranking as the preeminent measure of American book sales. People have gone to court over it, spent small fortunes on it and argued about it for generations. Who actually compiles it, and what do they count? What does a place on it do for a book? And what have people been willing to do to get there?

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• 2. A Quiet Debut

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  On the 12th of October 1931, The New York Times printed its first best seller list with little fanfare. It covered New York City only, with five fiction titles and four nonfiction titles. The idea was not new. A magazine called The Bookman had published the first American list in 1895-36 years earlier. The next month the Times expanded to eight cities, each with its own list. By the early 1940s the paper ran fourteen city lists.

  A national ranking arrived on the 9th of April 1942, in the Sunday Book Review. At first it simply tallied how often each book appeared on the city lists. Later the city lists disappeared. What remained was a single national ranking, built from reports by leading booksellers in 22 cities.

  By the 1950s the Times list had become the one that book professionals watched most closely, alongside the list from Publishers Weekly. The 1960s and 1970s brought a new kind of retailer. Mall chains such as B. Dalton, Crown Books and Waldenbooks sold fresh best sellers with mass-market appeal. They advertised a title's best-selling status as a reason to buy it, not just as a record of sales. That put new weight on the Times list for readers and booksellers alike. How the paper turned those bookseller reports into rankings, however, stayed private.

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• 3. Inside the Count

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  In 1992, the Times surveyed more than 3,000 bookstores, plus wholesalers that represented more than 28,000 other retail outlets, including variety stores and supermarkets. By 2004 the survey covered 4,000 bookstores and an unstated number of wholesalers. The reports are gathered by the editors of the News Surveys department, not by the Book Review that prints the list. Independent stores are underrepresented in the sample, so their figures receive extra weight. The numbers are widely believed to reflect retail sales rather than wholesale ones. The Times surveys booksellers precisely to capture what individual buyers purchase.

  A statement from the paper in 2013 shows what the list leaves out. The Times said it generally does not track sales of classic literature. A new translation of Dante's Inferno, for example, would never appear. Each list shows 15 to 20 titles, split by fiction and nonfiction, print and e-book, paperback and hardcover.

  Those divisions arrived piece by piece. On the 1st of January 1984, a list called Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous debuted with five titles. Advice books had been crowding the general nonfiction list. Its first number one, The Body Principal by Victoria Principal, had been number 10 and number 12 on the nonfiction lists in the two preceding weeks.

  In July 2000, a children's list was created after the Harry Potter series held the top fiction spots for an extended time. It ran monthly until the 13th of February 2011, when it became weekly. In September 2007, paperback fiction was divided into trade and mass-market sections. The change gave more visibility to the trade paperbacks that the newspaper reviewed more often.

  In November 2010 the Times announced it would track e-books, with data from RoyaltyShare, a San Diego based company. Two e-book lists appeared with the 13th of February 2011 issue. One combined print and e-book sales, and the other counted e-books alone. A third list, published only on the web, combined hardcover and paperback print sales. On the 16th of December 2012, the children's chapter books list split into middle-grade, for ages 8-12, and young adult, for ages 12-18. That young adult hardcover list would later be the scene of one of the paper's more awkward reversals.

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• 4. What It Takes

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  Fewer than 500 of the 100,000 new hardcover books published each year reach the list. That works out to 0.5 percent. The figure comes from a study in EPJ Data Science that analyzed every Times best seller within its window. Many novels, 26 percent, stay on the list for only one week. A novel is estimated to need weekly sales of 1,000 to 10,000 copies, depending on the competition. Median weekly sales run between 4,000 and 8,000 in fiction, and between 2,000 and 6,000 in nonfiction. Most books on the list sell 10,000 to 100,000 copies in their first year.

  The study covered the period from the 6th of August 2008 to the 10th of March 2016. In that time Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol set the record, with 3 million copies sold in one year. Two books tied for second, each selling 1.6 million copies: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.

  Nonfiction told a different story. More than half of the hardcovers that made the list were biographies. George W. Bush's autobiography, Decision Points, sold the most copies in a year. The runner-up was a biography, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

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• 5. The Critics' Case

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  A book industry report from the 1940s already judged best-seller lists a poor guide to sales. It found they rested on misleading data and measured only fast sales. A 2004 report quoted a senior book marketing executive who called the rankings "smoke and mirrors." A study in Book History found that many professionals "scoffed at the notion that the lists are accurate."

  Timing is the first complaint. A weekly list rewards a burst of sales, not a lifetime total. A book that sells slowly for years can outsell one that sold heavily for a single week and never reach the list.

  Mass-market paperbacks can see return rates as high as 40 percent from retailers back to wholesalers. That figure points to a second flaw, double counting. Wholesalers report what they sell to retailers, and retailers report what they sell to customers, so one copy can be counted twice. If an unsold copy comes back months later, a sale was reported that never truly happened.

  The Times also hands booksellers a form that lists the titles it expects might be best sellers, with an "Other" column for write-ins. Critics call this a leading technique. One bookseller compared it to a ballot offering "Bill Clinton and Other."

  Booksellers themselves can distort the picture. Because a place on the list lifts sales, wholesalers and retailers may report a book as a best seller before it is one. The listing then makes the claim true. Once a title is listed, it is marketed as a best seller. Retailers give it special placement and price discounts, and stores that rarely stock books, such as supermarkets, carry it.

  In 1999, Amazon.com announced a 50 percent price cut on books from the list, aiming to beat Barnes & Noble. After a legal dispute with the Times, Amazon could keep using the list only if it displayed titles in alphabetical order. By 2010 that condition was gone, and Amazon showed the best sellers first.

  Since the 1970s, publishers have written escalator clauses into contracts for major authors. These pay extra if a book makes the list, with the amount depending on its rank and how long it stays. Speaking fees can rise too. Book History summed up the effect. It wrote: "With so much at stake then, it is no wonder that enormous marketing effort goes into getting a book access to this major marketing tool."

  A Stanford Graduate School of Business analysis suggests that most book buyers use the list as a signal of what is worth reading. It found the biggest gains go to lesser-known writers. Perennial best sellers such as John Grisham or Danielle Steel see no benefit in additional sales.

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• 6. Buying a Place

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  In 1956, the author Jean Shepherd invented a novel called I, Libertine to show how easily best-seller lists respond to demand rather than sales. Fans of his radio show planted references to the book and its author so widely that demand surged. Claims spread that it was on the Times list.

  Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of the Dolls, tried to butter up the booksellers who reported to the Times. She also personally bought large quantities of her own book. Wayne Dyer, author of Your Erroneous Zones, purchased thousands of copies of his. Al Neuharth, a former head of the Gannett Company, had the Gannett Foundation buy two thousand copies of his autobiography, Confessions of an S. O. B.

  In 1995, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema spent $200,000 to buy ten thousand copies of The Discipline of Market Leaders. They allegedly placed small, strategically spread orders at bookstores whose sales were reported to BookScan. The authors denied wrongdoing. They saw the purchase as an investment, since a listing brings speaking engagements, more book deals and consulting. The book climbed to No. 4 and sat on the list for 15 weeks. It also reached No. 1 on the BusinessWeek list. Such efforts are not illegal, though publishers consider them unethical.

  After that scandal, the Times began marking any title with reported bulk orders with a dagger symbol. The dagger is not reliable. Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness was known to have been boosted by bulk orders, yet it carried no dagger.

  By 2013, buying a place had become a business. Forbes published a story headlined "Here's How You Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List." It described ResultSource, a San Diego based marketing consultancy that ran bestseller campaigns. The firm even guaranteed a No. 1 spot to anyone willing to pay enough. The Times said it comprehensively tracks weekly unit sales and declined to comment beyond its methodology. It did not alert its readers. The Wall Street Journal, by contrast, admitted that books had landed on its list through ResultSource campaigns.

  Soren Kaplan, who paid ResultSource to place his book Leapfrogging on the Journal's list, described the formula on his blog. He wrote: "Three thousand books sold would get me on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list." He continued: "Eleven thousand would secure a spot on the biggest prize of them all, The New York Times list."

  In 2014, the Los Angeles Times asked "Can bestseller lists be bought?" Its story described how the author and pastor Mark Driscoll hired ResultSource for $200,000. The contract aimed to place his book Real Marriage on the Times Advice How-to list. It stated that the firm would purchase at least 11,000 total orders in one week. Real Marriage topped the hardcover advice list on the 22nd of January 2014.

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• 7. Courts and Exclusions

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  In 1983, the author William Peter Blatty sued The New York Times for $6 million. His book Legion, later filmed as The Exorcist III, had been left off the list. He claimed negligence or intentional falsehood, arguing the book's high sales earned it a place. The Times answered that the list was an editorial product, not a mathematical measure, and so was protected as free speech. Blatty appealed, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The lower court ruling stood. The Times had the legal right to exclude his book. In 2017, a Times representative described the aim as making the lists reflect authentic best sellers.

  In July 2015, Ted Cruz's book A Time For Truth was kept off the list. The Times said the "overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales of Cruz's book were limited to strategic bulk purchases." Cruz called the Times "a liar" and demanded an apology. The Times said it stood by its statement and its evidence of manipulation.

  In August 2017, Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem, a previously unpublished author, was removed from the list. It had debuted in the No. 1 spot. The Times said an investigation of inconsistencies in the latest reporting cycle led it to conclude the sales did not meet its criteria. It issued an updated Young Adult Hardcover list for the 3rd of September 2017. The author Phil Stamper had uncovered unusual bulk ordering patterns that inflated the sales numbers. The book was published by GeekNation, an entertainment website based in Los Angeles. It began as a script and was rewritten as a novel in an attempt to launch a film franchise.

  In 2019, Donald Trump Jr.'s book Triggered was shown to have reached the list only through about $100,000 in behind-the-scenes bulk purchases. Vanity Fair reported in October 2020 that such gaming has been common among American conservative political figures. The magazine added that some of them used political campaign funds to pay for the bulk orders.

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• 8. Charges of Bias

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  In August 2017, the conservative publisher Regnery Publishing announced that its writers could no longer call themselves "New York Times best-selling authors." It believed the Times favors liberal books. The Times replied that authors' politics have no bearing on the list and that conservative authors routinely rank highly. The Associated Press noted that the Times is a frequent target of conservatives and Republicans.

  The Washington Post called the ban a "stunt" designed to increase sales. It asked a pointed question: "What better way to sell a book to a conservative audience than to promote the idea that the New York Times doesn't like it?" The Post also compared the Times list with the lists from Publishers Weekly, looking for bias. It found nothing convincing.

  In February 2018, Deborah Dundas, the books editor of the Toronto Star, reported a puzzle. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life topped the Publishers Weekly chart, yet it did not appear on the Times list at all. She received no reliable answers. The Times said the book was not counted because a Canadian company published it. Random House Canada said the book had been handled properly for the U.S. market. The commentator Dennis Prager wrote an article for National Review titled "The Times Best-Seller List: Another Reason Americans Don't Trust the Media." He argued that the conservative context of Peterson's book, and of his own The Rational Bible: Exodus, explained their absence. The Times denied any bias.

  A 2024 investigation by The Economist reached a sharper conclusion. It judged the list likely "politically biased" and reported that "accusations of bias against conservative books may have merit."

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