WSJ Will List Best EBooks

dangerousbill · Oct 28, 2011

The Wall Street Journal will now be adding e-books to its best-seller lists.
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011...er_list_nielson_adds_e_books_to_fic.html.html

MartinD · Oct 28, 2011

Thanks for the link.

So, not necessarily the best e-books, only the e-books that have sold the best.

merrihiatt · Oct 28, 2011

I'm excited to see this news. I wonder if free e-books will be excluded. They are "bought" in the sense that they are tracked; however, no actual money changes hands. I think of free e-books as a gift to the reader from the author and a way to get exposure for a new author.

dangerousbill · Oct 28, 2011

MartinD said:
So, not necessarily the best e-books, only the e-books that have sold the best.

Well, 'best' is subjective. Sales figures are not.

jrector · Oct 30, 2011

MartinD said:
Thanks for the link.

So, not necessarily the best e-books, only the e-books that have sold the best.

Not even the ebooks that have sold the best since they're only taking bookscan numbers. None of these lists (WSJ, NYT, USA Today) will be accurate until they start taking numbers from Amazon, which they don't do right now.

Torgo · Oct 30, 2011

jrector said:
Not even the ebooks that have sold the best since they're only taking bookscan numbers. None of these lists (WSJ, NYT, USA Today) will be accurate until they start taking numbers from Amazon, which they don't do right now.

Says right there in the article that they'll be taking numbers from Amazon.

The e-book lists will come from sales through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Google, among others. In addition to conventionally published books aimed at an adult audience, the lists can include titles from any of the following categories: self-published, children's and perennials, (older works that continue to do sell well).

But they won't give sales figures, only ranks. I suspect this is because of Amazon, who are oddly cagey about letting anybody know exactly how many of a given title they sell.

jrector · Oct 30, 2011

Wow, you're right, my mistake. For a long time they didn't take the numbers, so this is a new development that I didn't realize was happening.

Very good news.

Terie · Oct 31, 2011

jrector said:
Wow, you're right, my mistake. For a long time they didn't take the numbers, so this is a new development that I didn't realize was happening.

Very good news.

Well, the article specifies that only e-book numbers will be taken from Amazon, et al. This is a necessity since (IIRC) BookScan doesn't track e-book sales.

I wouldn't assume that using Amazon numbers will extend to physical books.

What I'm interested in seeing is how self-pubbed books will fare when taken in the conglomerate...that is, not just Amazon, but all the major e-tailers combined.

WSJ Will List Best EBooks

dangerousbill

Retired Illuminatus

MartinD

Thought I'd stop by

merrihiatt

Writing! Writing! Writing!

dangerousbill

Retired Illuminatus

jrector

Torgo

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.

jrector

Terie

Writer is as Writer does