Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Bestseller print lists are made by sales to distributors, not customers; returns are not considered.
Bestseller ebook lists at Amazon are calculated using free samples downloaded in addition to sales; getting a few hundred people to download a sample will cause a spike in the numbers--the thousands who download samples of new advertised books will drive highly-advertised books up the charts.
Bestseller NYTimes ebook lists refuse to count self-published books that are a substantial portion of popular ebook sales.
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There was an article a year or so ago that explained how the NYT determined their bestseller lists. Sorry I don't have the link. Basically, it said they count customer purchases from the cash register only in their lists. They stopped using the distributor method due to fraud. They have quite a few different merchants reporting sales. Besides bookstores I remember grocery stores, drug stores, warehouse clubs, dept stores listed. A few online retailers also.
The problem with self-published titles they noted was that it was still too easy to defraud or "fudge the numbers" and they do try to be as accurate as possible. An author/publisher can purchase their own titles from their own website and report 10,000 sales. And with many thousands of publishers and authors selling direct, quality control would be difficult. In any case, the list would probably be similar to Amazon's anyway.