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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?

#21

Post by cratermoon »

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.

The story specifically mentions that there were suspicious calls asking if a store was a NYT reporting store, followed by bulk orders with no delivery date.

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

#22

Post by rodgerd »

Spike Trottman's tweets around this present some interesting points: https://twitter.com/Iron_Spike/status/900797323403554817

Mot notably: this has been used as a tactic to get books and comics optioned for films (which will make more money than selling books ever does), and the author is a no-name actor who - surprise! - is angling to play the lead in the film of her #1 bestselling novel.

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

#24

Post by pbhjpbhj »

briandear wrote: post #16

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. Th…

Our pastor bought our whole (small) congregation a particular book to read a little while back, it seems equally to fail to report that as a sale of 1; just as much as registering the publisher buying their own book a hundred (thousand, ...) times.

... Cue a book buying app that reimburses the first n people to buy a book and scan the sales receipt in order to provide "genuine" sales for skewing popularity lists.

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

#25

Post by dopamean »

tysone wrote: post #9
dopamean wrote: post #7

I always assumed that the NYT Bestseller List was a marketing vehicle that you could buy into. Not that it didn't track legitimate "bestsellers." I just figured you could pay to play too. If people really care about knowing that for sure then I guess it's nice to see some actual proof of it.

Methodology: https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology/

Thanks! I probably should have looked for this myself...

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

#26

Post by dsr_ »

sireat wrote: post #19

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…

When the Ch\wrch of Sc\w+nt\wl\wgy did this they actually had their cultists pay for the books. Most of them were then sold to second-hand book stores.

Because money actually came through to them, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton were happy to order enough to keep up with the fake demand.

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

#27

Post by danso »

dopamean wrote: post #7

I always assumed that the NYT Bestseller List was a marketing vehicle that you could buy into. Not that it didn't track legitimate "bestsellers." I just figured you could pay to play too. If people really care about knowing that for sure then I guess it's nice to see some actual proof of it.

It wouldn't be much use if it was widely-known to be easily gamed. Even as a revenue vehicle, the NYT would do better (at least in the past decade) to make these books pay for ads the old-fashioned way.

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

#29

Post by lukasschwab »

This sort metrics-buying isn't unique to books:

The RIAA changed its rules so Jay-Z's 'Magna Carta Holy Grail' would go platinum instantly after Samsung bought one million copies to give away to its users: http://pitchfork.com/news/51392-riaa-changes-gold-and-platin...

A similar partnership with Sprint meant '4:44' also went platinum almost immediately, even though it was only distributed on TIDAL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/garysuarez/2017/07/05/jay-z-444...

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

#30

Post by geofft »

From 2013:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/02/22/heres-...

ResultSource, a San Diego-based marketing consultancy, specializes in getting books onto bestseller lists, according to The Wall Street Journal. For clients willing to pay enough, it will even guarantee a No. 1 spot. It does this by taking bulk sales and breaking them up into more organic-looking individual purchases, defeating safeguards that are supposed to make it impossible to "buy" bestseller status.

One of the methods they use is getting people who show up to talks to get a copy of the book, I guess because you can stuff the price of the book into the price of the ticket. (I have a book at home I got from attending a Pop-Up Magazine show, for which tickets were a bit pricier than I would have liked. I haven't opened it yet.)

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