Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
As for the "mainstream" bestseller lists (like the NYT) -- remember that they are created via a "proprietary" survey of an undisclosed group of bookstores. There's long been reason to believe that the included bookstores sell, shall we say, a rather different mix of books than what you'd get from cash register data (from all the various bar-code scanners in stores). I've certainly heard some authors and publishers with books on the NYT extended list complain that the barcode-scan-based data showed their book selling more than 2x as many copies as the bottom couple of books on the NYT non-extended list. They just weren't making those sales in "the right bookstores."
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It doesn't really matter whether the data is right or not ... the point is
The New York Times will be producing an ebook list and that, in and of itself, helps further legitimize ebooks as "real" books. Perhaps the data collection will be flawed (if it doesn't include Amazon, B&N, Borders/Kobo and Sony it
will be flawed); that will come to light in due course. The NYTimes companies are not among the Big Six Publishers so they have no inherent bias. The list will be what is: with the New York Times logo emblazoned at the sidelines.