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The Washington Post's bestseller lists have been wrong

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

#81

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

wp381640 wrote: post #64
peterlk wrote: post #22

Here's how "Best Sellers" become a thing: Publishers count the number of books they sell. This seems pretty simple, right? It is, but as a consequence, easily gamed. Publishers don't sell to you and me, they sell to book stores. So, you create some marketing to get people to preorder your book from a lots of different book stores. Book sellers inform the number of copies based, in part, on preorder numbers. There are…

I have a story about a well-known "best selling" author Some years ago received a random package in the mail - turns out it was 40+ copies of this authors new book. Had no idea what to do with them so they just sat around, I never even read it A few days later I notice some blogs running giveaways for the same book - figure they got deliveries of it as well. Go to a conference and in conversation find that a bunch of…

The same thing used to happen in the UK music charts. Sales were tracked in a small number of stores and then interpolated.

So of course record companies and sometimes artists would make sure there were big orders at those stores. And a lot of very bad records became unexpected chart toppers.

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

#82

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

greedo wrote: post #33
peterlk wrote: post #22

Here's how "Best Sellers" become a thing: Publishers count the number of books they sell. This seems pretty simple, right? It is, but as a consequence, easily gamed. Publishers don't sell to you and me, they sell to book stores. So, you create some marketing to get people to preorder your book from a lots of different book stores. Book sellers inform the number of copies based, in part, on preorder numbers. There are…

Book sellers are rarely stuck with unsold inventory. They almost always have the ability to send unsold inventory (though not magazines) back to the publisher for full credit.

I know of one publisher who massively overprinted a title. Most of the run didn't even make it to the stores.

Because of a worker error, the copies were left under a leak in the warehouse roof.

I understand there was an insurance claim. It was all very unfortunate.

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

#83

Post by ahartmetz »

trentnix wrote: post #16
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?

Read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" if you want to know what motivates media companies. (Spoiler: Advertisers first and foremost)

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

#84

Post by SyneRyder »

justinph wrote: post #73
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…

The Times makes it clear what their methodology is: https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology One anecdote posted on a conservative website is hardly a debunking of The Times' 75+ year history of best sellers lists.

Seems unfair to dismiss it that way. Here is the decision, Blatty vs New York Times Company, decided December 29, 1986:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme-court/1843273.html

The Times won on First Amendment (freedom of the press / speech) grounds. Blatty couldn't win, since the list would need to be "of and concerning" him:

> "To begin with, the list does not expressly refer to Blatty or his novel. Nor does he contend otherwise. Quite the contrary: the failure of Legion to appear on the list is the very basis of his action."

Perhaps most interesting for me is that the Times survey of bookstores included a pre-written list of the books they want sales numbers for:

> "To obtain sales figures from bookstores, [the Times] sent to the bookstores forms which [it] prepared; the forms for works of fiction contain and contained a printed list of 36 ‘bestselling’ books which has and had the effect of encouraging reports as to sales of books listed on the forms and discouraging reports as to sales of books not listed on the forms”

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

#85

Post by kd5bjo »

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?

Despite the obvious conflict of interest, you can get pretty far by talking to bookshop staff. They’re around the books all day, so it’s pretty much inevitable they’ll leaf through them and form their own opinions.

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

#86

Post by ramblerman »

peterlk wrote: post #22

Here's how "Best Sellers" become a thing: Publishers count the number of books they sell. This seems pretty simple, right? It is, but as a consequence, easily gamed. Publishers don't sell to you and me, they sell to book stores. So, you create some marketing to get people to preorder your book from a lots of different book stores. Book sellers inform the number of copies based, in part, on preorder numbers. There are…

It seems like amazon has access to more real metrics like total kindle time per book.

But perhaps it doesn’t serve them to diverge from the bestseller model.

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

#87

Post by lordgrenville »

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?

I find Goodreads recommendations pretty good, which are presumably based on a souped-up version of "people who liked $YOUR_LAST_BOOK also liked X".

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

#88

Post by falcor84 »

jammygit wrote: post #58
peterlk wrote: post #22

Here's how "Best Sellers" become a thing: Publishers count the number of books they sell. This seems pretty simple, right? It is, but as a consequence, easily gamed. Publishers don't sell to you and me, they sell to book stores. So, you create some marketing to get people to preorder your book from a lots of different book stores. Book sellers inform the number of copies based, in part, on preorder numbers. There are…

> As Amazon continues their vertical integration, it's not clear whether this problem will be addressed or not. Amazon might make things a lot worse. The “recommended by amazon” windows 10 keys are mostly fake ripoffs at this point with pages of complaints in the reviews Edit: added quote

I'm not familiar with this, what's the sellers business model then? Consumers easily get full refunds on fakes, no?

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

#89

Post by dredmorbius »

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?

Oddly enough, that's not been my problem for some sime now. Note that I largely read nonfiction....

1. Find a topic of interest.

2. Start reading at some arbitrary entry point, though generally favour texts with references.

3. Branch from there.

- Find the authors you most respect / who most make you think, and read their publications, and track down their sources and references, or where they're cited. Notes, footnotes, references, bibliographies, and citation indices are gold.

- Find the topics, questions, ideas, methods within the topic that you're most interested in and drill down on those.

- If you find yourself needing new skills in the course of explorations, pick up on those.

- Don't hesitate to ask for recommendations.

- If there's a concept that seems unclear, chase that down to its origins, and trace variants as the concept evolves

- Incidental histories and biographies can often provide further illumination.

- Eventually you should start constructing your ow structure or modle of the field or space (or subsets / components of it/them). This can further drive your exploration.

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

#90

Post by dredmorbius »

chc wrote: post #28
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

That seems like an even more questionable tool for deciding what to read than a best-seller list. Those guys are renowned for starting tech companies that made lots of money, not for their outstanding taste in books.

There are numerous other people who make book lists. Authors write book lists called "bibliographies".
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