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How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

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Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#11

Post by mcguire »

cratermoon wrote: post #3
ProAm wrote: post #2

I'm sure why this is news, the NYT Bestseller List has always be gamed. Usually the books are decent and true good books linger, but getting there has always been a $$ game

Probably because it's about a small unknown (non-existent?) publisher and a book that barely exists. Yes, big publishing houses definitely game the system so their marquee authors get on the list, but this is a sort of low-level hack.

A big publisher would likely be pushing its books onto the NYT list in order to sell books. I'm not entirely sure this book exists at all, outside of press releases.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#12

Post by andrewhillman »

I believe NYT has a bookstore list for reporting orders. This is how the best selling books make it on this list. The buyer (someone tied to the book) probably knew the store was on the NYT list and made a massive order. The NYT will need to tweak things going forward. Any store telling people they are on the NYT Best Seller reporting list should be removed from the list.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#13

Post by leeoniya »

andrewhillman wrote: post #12

I believe NYT has a bookstore list for reporting orders. This is how the best selling books make it on this list. The buyer (someone tied to the book) probably knew the store was on the NYT list and made a massive order. The NYT will need to tweak things going forward. Any store telling people they are on the NYT Best Seller reporting list should be removed from the list.

it's blackhat SEO, but offline (where it still works)

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#14

Post by ansible »

koolba wrote: post #5
ProAm wrote: post #2

I'm sure why this is news, the NYT Bestseller List has always be gamed. Usually the books are decent and true good books linger, but getting there has always been a $$ game

According to the article: > Nowadays, you can make the bestseller list with about 5,000 sales. That sounds pretty cheap. For a book that costs $10-20 that would be $50-100K to buy your way in. I'm not sure what the margins for books are these days (particularly the split between publisher and retailer) but that doesn't seem that expensive.

You can do what they did for L. Ron Hubbard's doorstop-ology "Mission Earth", where they'd buy the books in stores, give them back to the publisher, and buy them from the stores again. Booksellers were noticing that the books which came from the publisher already had their store's stickers on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Earth_(novel)#Sales_co...

Re-selling the books will save you some money.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#15

Post by wjnc »

leeoniya wrote: post #13
andrewhillman wrote: post #12

I believe NYT has a bookstore list for reporting orders. This is how the best selling books make it on this list. The buyer (someone tied to the book) probably knew the store was on the NYT list and made a massive order. The NYT will need to tweak things going forward. Any store telling people they are on the NYT Best Seller reporting list should be removed from the list.

it's blackhat SEO, but offline (where it still works)

From the OP: "Buying your way onto the bestseller list is not technically illegal, nor is it that hard if you know how."

It's a pretty awesome ploy, with one caveat: to make real money, somewhere, someone should produce something of value. Even if they offline kickstart this book into "#1 bestseller", at least the movie should be good enough for YA.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#16

Post by briandear »

It Seems like some sort of Neilson Ratings System would be more representative than basing it purely on sales.

Or lower the bulk threshold to one. Meaning a single sale of a title “counts” while >1 sales in a transaction counts as 1.

Buying 5 copies of one book doesn’t mean it’s being sold (or willingly read by) to 5 distinct people. So it’s popularity is really just “1” because only one person actually bought it.

That would be much harder to game since they would have to have a lot of single transactions to move the needle. Buying 29 at a time ought not count as 29 sales even though it technically IS 29 sales. But the intent of the Bestseller list is to determine popularity, not necessarily “units moved” otherwise, why disqualify bulk sales? Those ARE sales right? But the NY Times does have a bulk purchase flag which means the list isn’t about volume, but about perceived popularity.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#17

Post by briandear »

koolba wrote: post #5
ProAm wrote: post #2

I'm sure why this is news, the NYT Bestseller List has always be gamed. Usually the books are decent and true good books linger, but getting there has always been a $$ game

According to the article: > Nowadays, you can make the bestseller list with about 5,000 sales. That sounds pretty cheap. For a book that costs $10-20 that would be $50-100K to buy your way in. I'm not sure what the margins for books are these days (particularly the split between publisher and retailer) but that doesn't seem that expensive.

5000 sales at a reporting store. So that probably represents 50,000 actual books sold since not every store reports.

I think Nate Silver ought to do some work on this area; it would be interesting to read his analysis.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#18

Post by richard_mcp »

The NYT bestseller list has been a horrible indicator of what's selling for a while. You can often see well-known authors make the list weeks before their books are out due to massive orders by big box stores.

A much better source are Indie Bound's Indie Bestseller lists: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-bestsellers. While still able to be gamed, these lists are compiled based off of sales by independent booksellers. I've often found the books here to be better quality than the NYT bestsellers.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#19

Post by sireat »

This "buyer" is not going to buy any of the books.

The trick only works because the book is considered published yet it is out of stock so has to be back ordered.

And these back orders still count for the NYT bestseller list.

My guess is they somehow triggered some sort of last second revision for their own book at the publisher thus pausing the printing.

So the book is technically published and available in various catalogs yet you can't actually buy it. You can only back-order it.

I assume if you could actually order the book the "buyer" would have to shell out some cash.

An additional trick is that the "buyer" is being careful not to trigger bulk buying clause for each store.

It is basically the click farm equivalent online.

Re: How did “Handbook for Mortals” get on the NYT bestseller list?

#20

Post by Turing_Machine »

wjnc wrote: post #15
leeoniya wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's blackhat SEO, but offline (where it still works)

From the OP: "Buying your way onto the bestseller list is not technically illegal, nor is it that hard if you know how." It's a pretty awesome ploy, with one caveat: to make real money, somewhere, someone should produce something of value. Even if they offline kickstart this book into "#1 bestseller", at least the movie should be good enough for YA.

There are at least two companies that will guarantee (guarantee, mind you) a slot on the NYT list in exchange for a fee.
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