How Are Best-seller Lists Compiled?
Bookstore reports of best sellers are made up of intuition, a ‘feel,’ hope, love and, the need or desire to get a book moving that hasn’t yet moved but is expected to. The list is full of surprises to booksellers themselves. How odd to find on the list books your store has not sold a copy of all week, or some negligible number. The list never says how many a title has sold—18,000 countrywide last week, 23,000 countrywide this week. Publishers aren’t giving out that kind of information. What’s really interesting about the list is what’s not there . Stores automatically report novels and general nonfiction. But there is a whole world of self-help books or ‘tool’ books that never make the best seller lists and should. Thus books such as cookbooks might sell large numbers and still not make a weekly non fiction best-seller list. Bibles and textbooks are also usually omitted from the lists. Yet when an important new translation of the Bible is published, it may become a best seller and appe
