NY Times starts eBook bestseller list

[Maxinquaye]

This, I guess, goes to show the growing importance of eBooks to the publishing industry.

http://mashable.com/2010/11/11/new-york-times-e-books-bestseller-list/

The New York Times announced Thursday morning that it will begin publishing bestseller lists for e-book fiction and nonfiction in early 2011.


It's a good thing. More exposure for ebooks, which may grow the market further. Not that the market seems to need help growing at the moment.

[thothguard51]

This does not surprise me. They are just keeping up with current events.

While it can't hurt, I don't see anyone not already attracted to e-books as suddenly rushing out to buy a reader so they can start downloading, just because it made the NYT e list. This is different than reading about a print book on the NYT list and being able to walk into your local book store and asking for it...

I wonder what their criteria will be in choosing the top sellers. I mean, what tracking system will they use because we all know you can trust Amazon to keep an honest number...

[JanDarby]

I kinda' don't get it.

Won't the top ebook sellers likely be the same as the top other sellers? At least the paperback list? I mean, if Stephen King or Nora Roberts releases a book in paper and electronic format simultaneously -- or even not simultaneously -- aren't those ebook sales going to be far higher than any less well-known author's sales? I expect that people who read ebooks are going to read pretty much the same books as people who read paper books. So, what's the point?

Why not just combine all sales from all formats? Unless they're saying they're going to publish a list of digital-first publishers' bestsellers, but that seems bizarre too. I'm not sure anyone other than authors care about whether a book is digital-first or digital-eventually or digital-simultaneously.

I just don't get it.

[mscelina]

No. Usually, the top selling ebooks aren't the same as the current NYT bestseller list. A quick trip to Fictionwise or Amazon will show you that.


RoyaltyShare, a San Diego-based company that tracks data and aggregates sales information for publishers, will work with The Times, provide data and offer an additional source of independent corroboration.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/books/11list.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/books/11list.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss)

[thothguard51]

I would say this gives well established small e-publishers a chance to build their share even more. I wonder if romance and erotica will dominate the list?

[JanDarby]

No, romance and erotica won't dominate the list, except to the extent romance alrady dominates it. Stephen King and James Patterson and Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts and all the usual suspects will be at the top. Digital-first authors of romance and erotica are unlikely to be named.

I wasn't clear before. I didn't mean to say the e-list and the paper-list would match, line for line, but that they'd contain essentially the same books, perhaps at slightly different times, slightly different rankings, with maybe a surprise or two, but nothing distinctly different. Oh, plus you'd have the true self-publishers like the guy -- forget his name -- who's already a non-fiction bestseller and has decided to release his future non-fiction himself, electronically, instead of through a traditional publisher.

As long as ebook versions of paper books are released at a DIFFERENT time than the paper books, then, yes, there will be technically different lists, much as there are often different lists for hardcover and paperback. But the books on the lists will be essentially the same.

I'm not sure what evidence there is to the contrary. I just looked at the topsellers for Kindle, and they're the Bush memoir, a Grisham, the Steig Larsson books, and a Nora Roberts. On the paper books bestseller list at Amazon, you've got the Bush memoir, a Grisham, a Steig Larsson, and a Stephen King. Slightly different, because I believe the Nora Roberts book was a paperback, and these are all hardcover, some of which aren't available in electronic format yet, but fundamentally the same.

And I'm not seeing how this will make any room on the list for small, digital-first publishers. To make the traditional bestseller lists, it's generally said (if I remember correctly) that the author likely sold at least somewhere between 50K and 100K copies IN ONE WEEK. Let's say 5% of readers are now getting their books electronically, so these big authors will sell between 2500 and 5K e-books IN ONE WEEK. The top numbers for digital-first publishers runs around a thousand copies. In a MONTH (although most of those sales are in the month of the release).

The people who read ebooks aren't IN ADDITION TO readers in general; they're a subset of readers in general, and they read essentially the same books as paper readers, plus some digital-first books (and the percentage who read digital-first is minuscule). The patterns should therefore be essentially the same, with the only unknown being the folks who have a bestseller-size following and switch to self-publishing electronically.

Keep in mind that these lists are not about the total number of books sold over the life of the book (where digital-first might give the paper bestsellers a run for their money occasionally), but the total number sold in ONE WEEK.

So, bottom line, I think all this separate list does is try to demonstrate that the NYT has a clue about the ebook industry, when it doesn't. Of course, no one has a clue about it right now, but listing the topsellers is unlikely to provide any good marketing opportunities for digital-first publishers. I'm not sure it'll even provide any interesting data.

[FOTSGreg]

Digital-first authors of any sort are unlikely to be named period in my opinion unless they sell a bazillion copies and create a sensation. The NYT makes money on their BSL. They're not going to endanger their playground by listing a bunch of nobodies who just happen to be selling a few books online without some kind of gain from it.

What you're going to see is the listing of top selling Big Names who've got ebooks selling through Big Houses.

[profen4]

I'm with Jan. But I'd go so far as to say that I bet the NYT best seller list for Print will match EXACTLY that for the electronic version.