Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Demystifying the bestseller lists


by Sandra Parshall

Recently the book community expressed its collective dismay over business writers hiring a marketing company to buy enough copies of their books in their first week of release to put them on the Wall Street Journal list of bestselling business books. The Wall Street Journal itself ran a story highlighting three recent “bestsellers” that were created in this fashion. (The Journal article included the laugh-out-loud line: “The Journal declined to comment.”)

The authors and the company providing the service regard this as a legitimate marketing ploy. A book and its author will forevermore wear the label “Wall Street Journal Bestseller” and that alone will draw bigger audiences to the seminars and workshops that are the writers’ main source of income. In the end, perhaps no harm is done.

These incidents should, however, make all of us stop and question bestseller lists in general. How much validity do they have?

Compare two major bestseller lists for the same period, the week ending February 17, and you may wonder who to believe.

The top 10 New York Times hardcover fiction books for that week are, in order:
A Week in Winter
Gone Girl
Tenth of December
Guilt
A Memory of Light
Private Berlin
Suspect
Touch and Go
The Dinner
The Night Ranger


The Publishers Weekly list, which is based entirely on sales reported by Nielsen BookScan, has these top 10, in order:
A Week in Winter
Guilt
Until the End of Time
Gone Girl
Private Berlin
The Power Trip
A Memory of Light
Tenth of December
Touch and Go
The Racketeer


The differences are more pronounced on the mass market paperback fiction  bestseller lists.

The Times lists these top 10:
Safe Haven
Stay Close
Kill Me if You Can
The Hunter
A Game of Thrones
Killing Floor
Betrayal
Criminal
Cat Trick
A Storm of Swords


PW mixes fiction and nonfiction on its mass market paperback list, but  American Sniper is the only nonfiction title on it (and it’s #1). Discounting that book, PW lists these top 10 fiction paperbacks:
Betrayal
Stay Close
Kill Me if You Can
Love in Plain Sight
Safe Haven
Close Your Eyes
Criminal
The Hunter
Angel Mine
Just Kate


Of the top 20 paperbacks on the Times list, 11 do not appear at all on the PW top 20 list. 


Which list is accurate? Probably neither, although I'm inclined to favor the PW list because it is backed up by sales data.

The methodology behind the Times bestseller lists is such a closely held secret that not even staff members of the Book Review know how it’s done. The general explanation is that “selected” retail outlets across the country are sampled, and an estimate is made of which books are selling best. No sales figures are given.

The PW list does give sales figures, provided by BookScan. For example, BookScan reported that Betrayal by Danielle Steel sold 26,396 copies in the week between February 11 and 17. (Total sales for the year to date: 94,075 copies.) BookScan reported sales of 14,696 that week for Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks. Yet the Sparks book, which is number 6 on the PW bestseller list, is number 1 on the Times list for the same period, and the Steel book, the top fiction seller on the PW list, is number 7 on the Times list.

BookScan numbers supposedly represent 75-80% of total sales, so the books on the PW list are all actually selling better than reported.

Confused yet?

Here’s something else to consider: many writers say the BookScan numbers are nowhere near 75-80% of their total sales. Depending on where the books are sold, BookScan figures may represent only a fraction of sales. Author Colleen Doran compared her royalty statements with BookScan’s figures and found a huge disparity. She wrote a revealing blog about it here.

Through AuthorCentral on Amazon, writers can access BookScan sales figures for their books – but Amazon posts a long list of reasons why the BookScan number does not include all sales. BookScan counts sales in retail outlets, including Barnes & Noble, but ignores one huge market: libraries.

I can’t access figures for any books except mine, and sales of my small press novels are nowhere near the bestseller level, but they do illustrate what happens when the library sales are left out of the equation. My publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, makes the majority of its sales to libraries. My novels are not stocked by Barnes & Noble. The hardcover printing of my latest book, Bleeding Through (published simultaneously in trade paperback), sold out shortly after publication, and most of those copies went to libraries. I have already received a royalty statement and a check for those sales, so I know they happened. But according to BookScan, Bleeding Through has only sold 128 copies in all formats except e-book.

In the end, only the figures on a writer’s royalty statements mean anything. Yet, as Colleen Doran pointed out in her blog, BookScan’s drastic under-reporting of sales can torpedo deals for future books if an author is trying to sell to one of the big New York publishers. Editors and marketing people at those publishers look at BookScan’s report on sales of a writer’s past books before deciding whether to take a chance on a new project. If they see low numbers, they’ll be scared away. Never mind that BookScan only reports certain sales. Never mind that the writer’s royalty statements show much higher sales. BookScan is king right now, and too many people in publishing accept its figures as accurate.

At least we know that the books on the PW/BookScan bestseller list are actually selling better than the list indicates, perhaps a great deal better. But what of the New York Times list, the most respected, the most coveted by authors and publishers alike? Its methodology has long been suspect, as any process conducted in secret will be. Nobody knows exactly how the Times arrives at its ranking of books, but the list represents estimates, and no hard sales figures are ever supplied. The listing of many books by the Times is not supported by real, albeit under-reported, sales figures from BookScan. But the “New York Times Bestseller” label is considered golden by authors and publishers, although in many cases the books in question appear on the bottom part of the extended list – which has 35 titles on it – rather than in the top 20 published in the Book Review.

All of this may be life or death career stuff to writers, but it shouldn’t affect readers, who ought to make their buying decisions after determining whether a book is the kind of thing they will enjoy. Some readers, though, buy bestselling books because they are bestsellers (and that keeps them on the various lists). Then some of those readers show up online, on Goodreads or Amazon or Shelfari or, in the case of crime fiction, DorothyL, complaining that they wasted their money and feel deceived.

I’m not urging readers to avoid buying and reading bestsellers. If you know a writer’s work and have a good expectation of enjoying his or her new book, then by all means give that author your support by buying the book. If you don’t know the writer’s work, don’t let the book’s bestseller status be your only guide. Keep in mind that all bestseller lists may be deceptive. As with any product, know what you’re getting and whether it’s likely to suit you before you spend money on it. 


And remember that a lot of excellent books, including many you would enjoy, will never show up on any bestseller list.

16 comments:

Sheila Connolly said...

And you thought this business was logical? Ha!

Let me add that if you publish with a Big Six (or Five, or whatever it is this week) publisher, they are extremely stingy with their numbers. You're only the author--why should they tell you how many of your books they have shipped (note--not sold, because there's always that murky "returns" number). You receive royalty statements twice a year, with no way to break out when or where your books are selling (and thus no way to target promotion). If you try to get numbers from a different source, like PW, often it's expensive.

The venerated NYT list is a curious thing. On one hand, it is perceived as elite, highbrow, literary, etc. On the other hand, if you look at it you see quite a few "popular" books from writers like Nora Roberts and Debbie Macomber--even self-published books. So they're looking at sheer numbers of sales somewhere. And (gasp) an increasing number of cozies have crept onto the list, something previously unheard of.

Why do publishers and vendors conspire to keep us poor writers guessing? What do they really know?

Sandra Parshall said...

Sheila, if nobody is counting your library sales, you can't possibly get an accurate number. Yes, you can subscribe to Publisher Alley and get the Baker & Taylor numbers, which are mostly library sales, but they're not complete either because some libraries buy from other dealers.

All that really matters is the figure on your royalty statement and on your checks, but I hear a lot of writers say they don't trust their publishers to be honest. In the past, it was apparently routine for publishers to cheat writers and keep them in a subservient position, as if they were low-level employees of the publisher instead of the single most important force in the whole process. I don't think publishers can get away with that much longer. Writers have other options these days.

Libby Hellmann said...

I always thought the NYTimes list was based on orders, not sales, which is why a book that was released on a Tuesday gets on the list so quickly.

Tammy said...

So much interesting information, Sandy, thank you!

Sandra Parshall said...

Libby, I don't think anybody knows how the Times list is compiled, except the people who collect the information. I don't trust anything that's done secretly, which is why I put more faith in the admittedly flawed BookScan figures. But most writers view the Times list as the Holy Grail.

Sandra Parshall said...

BTW, I *do* trust my publisher to give an honest accounting of sales and to pay me what I'm owed. (I just wish the sales were greater and the checks were bigger.) A lot of writers, though, seem to have an adversarial relationship with their publishers and have a hard time getting any information. Some writers say they can't even find out how many copies of their books were printed. That seems like pretty basic information that the writer is entitled to.

Laura Alden said...

I don't tend to trust secret lists either, but if the Times made their methodology public, wouldn't some authors/publishers immediately start trying to figure out the best way to game the system? Maybe the Times thinks secret is better than suspect?

Leslie Budewitz said...

A friend who recently made the NYT mm pb list believes their numbers do include pre-orders, which is often why a book makes a big drop the 2d week, although their inclusion can't be confirmed without the methodology. Cozies are starting to stay in the top 20 2-3 weeks and that's a great sign for their staying power.

Sandy's post points out that figures are often scattered among various sources that writers can't access. But agents can, and should be doing that for their writers.

Sandra Parshall said...

Leslie, do you remember when, a few years ago, a mutual friend of ours -- who shall be nameless here because I haven't the right to publicly identify her -- reported that her publisher had dropped her series, which had *seemed* to be doing quite well? She was sailing along, believing that big pre-orders meant great sales, only to discover in the end that returns were abysmally high, so high that the publisher decided her series would never make enough money to justify continuing it.

At least I know that when the bulk of my books go to libraries they won't be returned.

Leslie Budewitz said...

I do remember that, Sandy, and we both know how hard that hit her. I completely agree that publishers should treat authors as equal partners and give us full access to all numbers -- so we can all work smarter for mutual good. The small press for my nonfiction book does provide month-by-month sales figures; I'm surprised to discover that others apparently don't.

And the disparity between the two lists is quite startling, isn't it? I would expect some differences -- if they used the same sources, we'd only need one list -- but not nearly so many.

Sheila Connolly said...

I didn't mean to criticize my publisher, and yes, editors can get the numbers if they choose to. The problem is (to the best of my knowledge) that it isn't an automatic thing. The editor has to make a point of asking for the current sales numbers. Two different departments. I'm not defending the practice.

As far as I know, pre-orders count, but only as of pub day. Even if your pre-order numbers are spectacular, you won't see the book on any list until publication (when they all come in with a whoosh).

Of course, I could be wrong, or it could be different with each editor and publishing house. And all too often we writers are told our numbers are "good" or "okay" with no hard figures to back that up, or to compare to anything else.

Sandra Parshall said...

Is there any other job that requires people to work with such uncertainty? It's crazy when you really think about it.

And, Sheila, judging from everything I've read and heard, I think editors at the big publishers also deserve a lot more respect within their companies than they get. If a book fails, it can have an impact on the editor's career. Editors and authors should both be in the know about sales, right from the beginning. Writers often get the "don't worry your pretty little head" treatment, and I'm not sure marketing departments accord editors much respect either.

Steven M. Moore said...

Good sleuthing, Sandra.
I've always been confused by book sales figures. Academic institutions use an even stranger system, the "science citation index" (there's a reference work of this name). This basically counts the number of times an author's paper is cited, which was always amusing to me because so many academic papers are just redoing previous ones, perhaps with an added comment or two.
What I do as a reader (and as a reviewer) is to look at all the info I can find about a book and then decide if it's interesting enough to read. Sometimes I throw in the towel rather early, but life's full of gambles.
Here's an even greater mystery: Why do readers return free or $0.99 ebooks to Amazon's KDP Select? The lag time involved also biases stats. A reader will pay $3 for a cup of Starbucks' swill but returns a free or almost-free ebook? That's a side issue, of course.
I wish I could recommend a better system, but I think we're seeing a chaos effect here. There are so many new books being produced it's becoming almost impossible to follow the sales histories of any specific book. And, if you deal with paperbacks, trade paperbacks, or hard bounds, how do you count all those readers who exchange books they buy with their reading friends? I'm more interested in counting readers, and no present system seems to do that well.
r/Steve

Sandra Parshall said...

Publishers don't care so much about readers -- they care about who pays for the book. I have many, many readers who get my books from libraries. Not so many who buy the .

Anonymous said...

Thank you Sandra for the most informative information that I've read on these lists. The "lists" may not be important, as I've been told, but as a writer I KNOW what they can do for a career.

Vicki Lane said...

Thanks, Sandy, for the in depth look at this baffling subject.