Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
This effect showed up quite a while ago in other markets. When the record business switched from survey-style data collection to barcode based data collection, they suddenly discovered that  country music outsold good old rock and roll by a substantial margin. Even though the survey-based data had been saying otherwise for years. Seems likely that the same effect may be going on in the book bestseller lists too. |
If I may be allowed to add a comment about this, the Soundscan system for music revealed a couple of other things as well.
The first was that new records (cd's) do not climb the charts as was portrayed for decades by the Billboard and other charts. Instead, they sell most of their copies the first couple of weeks and then spend their lives drifting down the charts.
The second was that 80% of an album's sales occurs within the first eight weeks of its release.
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As Leebase discussed above, since Amazon has such a large share of the eBook market, I trust its sales chart to be representative of the whole, Baen notwithstanding. I noted yesterday that all three of the Steig Larssen eBooks are at the top.