NYT to Rank Ebook Bestsellers

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If the NYT does not, then the list is fixed and useless as it would be untrue.

Does Baen release their sales figures? Do they send their transaction data to Royalty Share? Or AAP? Bowker?

NYT may not be able to obtain the info they need.

[SensualPoet]

I seriously doubt if any casual sci-fi ebook buyer has ever heard of Baen. They have heard of Amazon if they own a Kindle, and the bookstores of B&N, Sony or Kobo if they have those respective store devices, as well as Amazon which they know they cant buy from. But Baen? A non-starter in the mainstream.

This says nothing about Baen's quality ... but says volumes about "purchase intent" among eReader owners. And therefore low impact on a mainstream list like New York Times.

[hollyahook]

I was wondering when they were going to start doing ebooks. I imagine the top ten will be similar to the paper book top ten, however.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

From what I can tell, the best-selling Baen ebook on Amazon is [u]The Spirit Ring[u] (ranked #35,653), the best-selling in all formats is In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V (ranked #7,964).

Baen sells more from their own website, to be sure. But methinks they loom larger in the imagination of MR posters than they do in the book biz.

Some of Baen's authors may have put their eBooks up at Amazon (I don't know one way or the other). But the reason you're not finding Baen eBooks listed at Amazon is... because Baen doesn't sell their eBooks through Amazon (because Amazon won't let Baen choose no-DRM).

So it makes perfect sense that you're not finding their ebooks selling well in a store where those books aren't sold.

Xenophon

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

I seriously doubt if any casual sci-fi ebook buyer has ever heard of Baen. They have heard of Amazon if they own a Kindle, and the bookstores of B&N, Sony or Kobo if they have those respective store devices, as well as Amazon which they know they cant buy from. But Baen? A non-starter in the mainstream.

This says nothing about Baen's quality ... but says volumes about "purchase intent" among eReader owners. And therefore low impact on a mainstream list like New York Times.

If they are a casual SF buyer (ebook or otherwise), they probably don't notice which publisher the books come from in the first place. On the other hand, take a walk through the SF section of your local bookstore, and see what fraction of the books have a Baen logo on the spine. I think—although I may well be wrong—that you'll find that they are the 2nd biggest SF/Fantasy publisher (after Tor's various imprints). All of which means approximately nothing when compared with total eBook sales through Amazon.

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."

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.

Xenophon

[GA Russell]

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.

*****

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.

[SensualPoet]

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."

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.

[Fbone]

Since the method is proprietary we really won't know how they create the list although sometimes they do tell us what's not included. But there isn't really any way we can gauge how accurate the list will be as no one has all the needed information to compare it with.

[Andrew H.]

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.

Xenophon

I do remember how wrong the survey method was as opposed to the sound scan system at the time. However, if I remember the numbers correctly(and it has been a long time), sound scan showed that there were about 50% more country albums than rock albums in the billboard top 100, but that three times as many rock albums were sold as country albums. Which is a very interesting statistic itself.

As for an e-book bestseller list, I'm of two minds about it. On the positive side, it does seem to validate e-books as medium worth paying attention to. On the negative side, it also has the potential to ghettoize ebooks, if they are relegated to their own bestseller list and not counted in the other sales lists.

I mean, if I'm looking for a bestselling NY Times book, I'd like to know how it ranks among *all* books, and not just among e-books.

Right now, the NY Times distinguishes among hardbacks, paperbacks, (with lists for fiction and nonfiction), plus children's books and graphic novels (and maybe I've left out a category). This is a reasonable division, as these are generally separate categories (even though a book could be in both hardback and paperback fiction, this happens so rarely that I don't think the categories can be said to compete with each other. But this is not true of e-books: they compete with both categories, and having a separate list will make the other lists less useful for people looking to buy a popular book.

Of course, an e-book isn't really a hardback or paperback, either. If I were designing the list, I would have a "Hardcover" (including ebooks) and "Paperback" (including ebooks) list. If a book were only in hardback, I would attribute all e-book sales to the hardback list. Once the book came out in paper back, I would attribute all e-book sales to the paperback list. Of course there can also be a separate e-book bestseller list.

The reason for this, again, is to prevent a situation under which a certain hardback loses the opportunity to be the No. 1 bestseller on the NY Times hardback list (which is the most prestigious list) because a lot of people bought it in e-book format. Including e-book sales in the hardback list is just as valuable for people looking to buy the hardback as it is for people looking to buy the e-book.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

the reason you're not finding Baen eBooks listed at Amazon is... because Baen doesn't sell their eBooks through Amazon (because Amazon won't let Baen choose no-DRM).

That's why I also listed their paper sales.

To be clear, I'm sure Baen does a nice business. However, to imagine that they are a sales behemoth like Harlequin, and to omit them would utterly demolish the integrity of the NY Times Bestseller lists, is just plain funny.

[Seanette]

Why choose from the best-sellers, unless you want to be following the "what everyone else is reading" flock?

I prefer to choose my entertainment based on my own tastes, not the herd mind.

[Sonny Blount]

I don't think being on a seperate list will ghettoize ebooks.

Music charts always had a US and a UK chart without problems. It is just as likely that in time the ebook chart will be more meaningful and the hardback list will be the ghetto, as it is more likely that ebook data will give information closer to what people are actually reading over that period.

As for pricing, surely that has always been part of what chart data should tell you, publishers have alway had the option of selling their hardcovers for $10 to try and top the bestseller list, although I would prefer to see seperate lists for above and below $2.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Seanette

Why choose from the best-sellers, unless you want to be following the "what everyone else is reading" flock?

I prefer to choose my entertainment based on my own tastes, not the herd mind.

Certainly people who read books on the best seller are not as good as you are; I would never claim that these people are in any way as sophisticated or independent as you are. And of course it's easy for you to use your superior intellect to foresee which books you might enjoy.

For the rest of us, the bestseller lists can alert us to new books that we may not have heard of and that may be interesting. Especially if a book has been on a best seller list for months.

[Seanette]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Certainly people who read books on the best seller are not as good as you are; I would never claim that these people are in any way as sophisticated or independent as you are. And of course it's easy for you to use your superior intellect to foresee which books you might enjoy.

For the rest of us, the bestseller lists can alert us to new books that we may not have heard of and that may be interesting. Especially if a book has been on a best seller list for months.

Nice job of psychoanalysis on a total stranger. Too bad you couldn't be more wrong about me. Elitist I am not (IMO that would be those who smugly proclaim that they ONLY read best-sellers), I just don't think dreck like the Twilight series or anything by James Frey magically becomes worthwhile reading based on sales numbers or Queen Oprah bestowing her blessing on it. I'll go on plot summaries, samples, etc., and make up my own mind rather than taking the best-seller list as my TBR list.

[varelov]

NYT is compiling a list of ebook bestsellers? I am "sure" it will be totally unbiased and based on hard facts. Is Oprah doing the same thing?
And no, I am not going to have that list in mind next time I out to purchase an ebook.