Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 97 posts

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#11

Post by rosser »

ilamont wrote: post #3

These lists can be manipulated. There was a case a few years back involving bogus bookstore sales of Lani Sarem’s "Handbook for Mortals" to trick the New York Times: Stamper and other YA writers, including Jeremy West, began to investigate. Stamper shared messages he had received from bookshop staff who said they had been contacted to see if their store was an NYT-reporting shop – the paper’s lists are collated from…

A friend used to work for an organization whose function was to buy books from NYT-reporting sellers for purposes of inflating the sales numbers of a given title, to manipulate it onto the bestseller list. They were usually paid by the publishers, but sometimes directly by the authors themselves.

This has been going on for a very long time.

EDIT: Phrasing.

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#12

Post by Tushon »

huffmsa wrote: post #9
pwinnski wrote: post #2

The process was broken for seven months before anybody noticed? If I were the Washington Post, I'd wonder why nobody brought up discrepancies with other lists during that time.

This is the same publication staring down a $250m libel lawsuit for their inability to fact check before publishing. You expect too much from them.

That was dismissed recently, with a handy summary from the judge: The judge who oversaw the case, William O. Bertlesman, said in his dismissal, "The Court accepts Sandmann's statement that, when he was standing motionless in the confrontation with Phillips, his intent was to calm the situation and not to impede or block anyone. However, Phillips did not see it that way. He concluded that he was being 'blocked' and not allowed to 'retreat.' He passed these conclusions on to The Post. They may have been erroneous, but as discussed above, they are opinion protected by the First Amendment. And The Post is not liable for publishing these opinions."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/27/media/washington-post-defamat...

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#13

Post by [deleted] »

huffmsa wrote: post #9
pwinnski wrote: post #2

The process was broken for seven months before anybody noticed? If I were the Washington Post, I'd wonder why nobody brought up discrepancies with other lists during that time.

This is the same publication staring down a $250m libel lawsuit for their inability to fact check before publishing. You expect too much from them.

[deleted]

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#14

Post by dlivingston »

adeelk93 wrote: post #8
twerkinggumby wrote: post #4

They should just get rid of bestseller lists. They exist purely for marketing and for tricking chumps into buying mediocre books.

Discovery is challenging, how would you propose finding something new to read?

A lot of influential figures publish their reading lists, like Bill Gates [0], Elon Musk [1], and Patrick Collision [2]

[0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-201...

[1]: https://medium.com/swlh/elon-musks-reading-list-every-book-h...

[2]: https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#15

Post by j88439h84 »

dlivingston wrote: post #14
adeelk93 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery is challenging, how would you propose finding something new to read?

A lot of influential figures publish their reading lists, like Bill Gates [0], Elon Musk [1], and Patrick Collision [2] [0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-201... [1]: https://medium.com/swlh/elon-musks-reading-list-every-book-h... [2]: https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

Why ask three people when you can ask a million?

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#16

Post by trentnix »

hirundo wrote: post #5

Kudos to the Post for attempting to produce an objective list. The New York Times doesn't: > In other words, The New York Times best-seller list is not a best-seller list -- which even The New York Times once acknowledged. In the early 1980s, William Peter Blatty, author of the monumental best-seller "The Exorcist," sued The New York Times for only listing his novel on the list one time, even though it sold in the mi…

Does that apply to the rest of paper as well?

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#17

Post by chipotle_coyote »

huffmsa wrote: post #9
pwinnski wrote: post #2

The process was broken for seven months before anybody noticed? If I were the Washington Post, I'd wonder why nobody brought up discrepancies with other lists during that time.

This is the same publication staring down a $250m libel lawsuit for their inability to fact check before publishing. You expect too much from them.

I'm not sure why the reply to you (from someone else) has vanished; perhaps that poster deleted it to redraft it. But your description of the case is, well, a little facile. This is the case of the Trump-supporting high school student who felt he was being unfairly portrayed in a confrontation with an American Indian activist in January, and indeed, it was dismissed last week.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9844670-181/judge-dismiss...

The original reply to you said it was dismissed because the statements accused of being defamatory were mostly opinions, which is true, but in context, they weren't even the Post's opinions: they were statements by others, including the activist, the Post was reporting as having been said. The statements by the activist that he felt threatened are protected because, as opinion, they're not subject to libel laws; the Post's reporting on the activist's statements appear to be accurate.

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#18

Post by rolltiide »

dlivingston wrote: post #14
adeelk93 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery is challenging, how would you propose finding something new to read?

A lot of influential figures publish their reading lists, like Bill Gates [0], Elon Musk [1], and Patrick Collision [2] [0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-201... [1]: https://medium.com/swlh/elon-musks-reading-list-every-book-h... [2]: https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

And then we can aggregate those, put it on a website and post affiliate links gradually becoming the go to source for book lists and then sell spots on the list and then people start publishing their own reading lists and someone aggregates those and...

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#19

Post by Angostura »

dlivingston wrote: post #14
adeelk93 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery is challenging, how would you propose finding something new to read?

A lot of influential figures publish their reading lists, like Bill Gates [0], Elon Musk [1], and Patrick Collision [2] [0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-201... [1]: https://medium.com/swlh/elon-musks-reading-list-every-book-h... [2]: https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

> They exist purely for marketing

Re: The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

#20

Post by read_if_gay_ »

j88439h84 wrote: post #15
dlivingston wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of influential figures publish their reading lists, like Bill Gates [0], Elon Musk [1], and Patrick Collision [2] [0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-201... [1]: https://medium.com/swlh/elon-musks-reading-list-every-book-h... [2]: https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

Why ask three people when you can ask a million?

Because the opinion of the three might be worth more.
Post reply on HN