This is Big...New York Times' First E-Book Bestseller List

[GA Russell]

I may be out of line here, but I think that Scott is right. If you want to know what the best selling books in the US are, just go to Amazon.

I think that the purpose of the NYT list is that the readers of the NYT want to see what people just like themselves are reading.

Remember too that there is a promotional aspect. When the publishing industry got tired of seeing Harry Potter at #1 for so many weeks in a row, the NYT just decided to delete it from the list, and create a new list just for it.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Scott Nicholson

Yawn. Amanda Hocking is probably the #1 bestselling e-book author right now and you won't find her on any list. She's already sold half a million copies without a publisher.

How many titles, though? NYT list sorts by individual title. I'd expect Konrath to qualify--except there, too, the sales are split across more than a dozen titles.

I agree, though, that they'll probably be skipping self-published authors; otherwise, there is a good chance that $.99 priced-to-entice ebooks of popular authors like Hocking and Konrath will show up on their lists. And I can't think of any coherent way they could exclude free ebooks, or books that had part of their life cycle as free downloads.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

How many titles, though? NYT list sorts by individual title. I'd expect Konrath to qualify--except there, too, the sales are split across more than a dozen titles.

I agree, though, that they'll probably be skipping self-published authors; otherwise, there is a good chance that $.99 priced-to-entice ebooks of popular authors like Hocking and Konrath will show up on their lists. And I can't think of any coherent way they could exclude free ebooks, or books that had part of their life cycle as free downloads.

I read a story about Amanda Hocking, in which she said she was selling at least 1,000 books a month. The threshold for the NYT list seems to run in the several thousands of sales per title, best I've gathered. And it's a weekly list, so you need to make those several thousand sales in one week.

Adding link to story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-..._b_804685.html

[elemenoP]

>>Amanda Hocking is probably the #1 bestselling e-book author right now and you won't find her on any list. She's already sold half a million copies without a publisher.<<

But Amanda Hocking is sold on Amazon and B&N, so she is the kind of author who may expressly benefit from the NYT's ebook list, if her sales are high enough. You will have to look elsewhere for an ebook author who is self-published AND self-distributed.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Scott Nicholson

Yawn. Amanda Hocking is probably the #1 bestselling e-book author right now and you won't find her on any list.

Someone I've never heard of being promoted as the ebook darling of the week in order to make indie authors feel good about themselves. Yawn.

[Kali Yuga]

I don't see any particular reason to bash the NY Times, especially for who is or isn't on the list based on the list not even being published yet.

I'd also assume that Amazon, B&N and a few other retailers are submitting information to the NYT. First, they all pretty much need the NYT Bestseller list, since it's a popular and prestigious sales index -- it'd be like Tower Records refusing to submit data to Soundscan.

Second, I'm sure they have all sorts of agreements that ensure the confidentiality of the sales figures. It's not like they compete against the NYT.

Third, the publishers are getting that kind of data and submitting it to the NYT anyway. So if Amazon irrationally decided to hold out, the NYT could likely deduce the figures from the publishers' numbers.


On a side note, I find it rather amusing that people think it's more accurate to use the internal sales rankings of a company with around a 40-50% market share, over a list that gathers data from multiple sources -- almost certainly including said company....

[Kali Yuga]

...and a little more info on the new list set up from PW: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...its-lists.html

It looks like they're doing a combined list of all the print and ebook sales, with the format ranks broken out. E.g. "The Inner Circle" by Brad Meltzer has a total fiction sales rank of 10, a print rank of 3 and an ebook rank of 15.

It sounds like they'll still put out lists by format, we'll know for sure next week.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

First, they all pretty much need the NYT Bestseller list, since it's a popular and prestigious sales index...

On a side note, I find it rather amusing that people think it's more accurate to use the internal sales rankings of a company with around a 40-50% market share, over a list that gathers data from multiple sources...

Kali, I find it amusing that some people consider a sales index to be prestigious!

[Namekuseijin]

e-books are great! Publishers will get constant income from the fact readers only buy first-hand, since there's no reselling of what they don't own.

minor bitter gripe aside, I truly dig e-books all the way.

[JoelArnold]

Originally Posted by Paul Levine

In March 2008, there were 100,000 Kindles in use. At Christmas 2010, there were 11 million. And by Christmas this year, the estimate is 22 million.

Yowza! Your thoughts?

I'll take your Yowza! and double it!

[elemenoP]

If they are going to exclude free ebooks, will we see promotional pricing of 1 cent? Can you price a book under $1 at Amazon?

eP

[elcreative]

Just curious as to where half a million came from... the article (dated 7th Feb 2011) says over 185,000... OK, half a mill is over 185,000 but that's a hell of a lot of sales in a couple of days...

Originally Posted by elemenoP

>>Amanda Hocking is probably the #1 bestselling e-book author right now and you won't find her on any list. She's already sold half a million copies without a publisher.<<

But Amanda Hocking is sold on Amazon and B&N, so she is the kind of author who may expressly benefit from the NYT's ebook list, if her sales are high enough. You will have to look elsewhere for an ebook author who is self-published AND self-distributed.

[abookreader]

USA Today Article on Amanda Hocking - 450,000 eBook sales in January for 9 novels

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/n...oks09_ST_N.htm

edit to add: As of this week 3 of her titles are on the USA Today bestseller list.

[GA Russell]

Thanks for that Amanda Hocking link, a bookreader! It tells me that an amateur who knows his audience can effectively market without a budget.

[beppe]

Here are the links to the best sellers lists
E-Book Fiction
E-Book Nonfiction