What’s the difference between the NY Times bestseller list, the USA TODAY bestselling books and Amazon bestsellers? It’s all in how the list in complied. This article contains all the major bestseller lists along with an explanation of how each different list is compiled.
How Are Best Sellers Determined
It seems like a simple process: an author writes a great novel, hundreds of thousands of people purchase it, and then that book is named a best-seller. However, who exactly decides what is a best seller and what criteria or data do they use?
In general a book has to sell at least 5,000 copies in a week to land on any of the mid-tier best-sellers list and 10,000+ to make it on a top-tier list. Each list is compiled differently, and each list uses different time periods for calculation. Some lists use the previous Monday through Sunday, while others use Tuesday to Monday. It’s for this reason that many book’s launch on a Tuesday or get big promotional pushes that begin on Tuesdays.
A note about the term “best seller.” There seems to be no real consensus on how to write the term. Is it best seller, best-seller, or bestseller? Different publications write out the term in different ways. According to the Associate Press we should write “Best-Seller”, but the NY Times and Amazon.com prefer to go without the hyphen: “Best Seller.”
The New York Times Best Sellers Lists
The New York Times Best Sellers List is considered a highly prestigious list, but the process that it uses to determine which books are best-sellers is still somewhat mysterious. A spokesperson from the New York Times broadly reported, “The Times’s best-seller lists are based on a detailed analysis of book sales from a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context of their sales each week.” Although its exact methods are a mystery, the Times separates what it deems as best-sellers into several categories including separate formats, genres, fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books.
Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller Lists
The Publisher’s Weekly bestseller list is created based on data from a service called BookScan, which track of roughly 80-85% of printed book sales in the US. BookScan gathers sales information from about 16,000 retailers every week. Publisher’s Weekly then divides this massive amount of data into book formats, genres, and age categories to determine the top sellers.
Amazon.com Best Sellers
Amazon.com’s best sellers list is updated hourly and it simply takes Amazon’s own book sales into account. Books are separated into 37 distinct categories ranging from audiobooks to travel, and each of these broad subjects are further filtered into sub-categories. The list is unique in that it has so many specific niches, and this makes it’s easy for readers to drill down into genres and sub-genres.
Amazon Charts: Most Read and Most Sold
Amazon Charts compiles the 20 most read and most sold books each week, and they’re simply separated into fiction or non-fiction. The “most read” list ranks the most popular books people are listening to on Audible or reading on their Kindles, whereas “most sold” ranks the total number of copies pre-ordered or sold through Amazon and Audible.
Kindle eBook Best Sellers
Amazon updates the Kjndle Best Seller list hourly based on the sales of Kindle ebooks. The list contains the top 100 purchased and top 100 free books in many genres and sub-genres.
USA Today Best Selling Books
USA Today openly explains how they create their weekly best-sellers list. They obtain book sales information from retailers including online stores, independent bookstores, and popular mass merchandisers to determine the most sold books. Both physical books and ebooks are taken into account for their ratings and are divided by genre and whether they are fiction or nonfiction. USA Today’s best selling books list represents the sales made from Monday through Sunday each week.
Kirkus Reviews Bestsellers
Kirkus Reviews lists the most popular bestsellers each week, but then they take it a step further by providing detailed reviews of each book. Critics then recommend to readers whether or not they should read a book. Their book reviews cover fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and teen content.
Wall Street Journal Book Review
The Wall Street Journal list of Best Selling Books depends heavily on the sales of the books, as determined by BookScan. BookScan’s data represents weekly sales from over 16,000 bookstore locations nationwide including major bookstores, online stores and independents as well. The WSJ list contains categories in fiction, nonfiction, and business. WSJ also presents in-depth reviews of many books each week.
Newsday Bestsellers
Newsday’s Weekly Bestsellers list is “powered by” Publisher’s Weekly, meaning it’s identical to PW’s list. The Newsday list contains only hardcover and paperback books in both fiction and nonfiction.
IndieBound Best Sellers
Indiebound’s bestsellers list is compiled using sales and other data from hundreds of independent bookstores. This list reflects what non-chain bookstore owners are commonly recommending to their customers rather than listing which books that are the most popular overall.
Christian Booksellers Association (CBA)
CBA’s best-sellers list is derived from sales data solely from Christian stores that sell books. Their categories include Christian living, fiction, children’s, and young adult books, as well as different types of Bibles.
LA Times Bestsellers List
The LA Times Bestsellers List is based on local sales data. Specifically, the list is created according to poll results taken from Los Angeles-based bookstores. The list is really a reflection of books that are popular in LA, which has different tastes than other parts of the country. This features hardcover and paperback fiction and nonfiction.
San Francisco Chronicle
Like the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle’s list focuses on the bestsellers of one specific region–in this case, the Bay Area. The list contains both fiction and nonfiction.
Globe and Mail Bestsellers
The Globe and Mail’s Weekly Bestseller List reflects the top-selling books in bookstores across Canada, as well as data collected from BNC SalesData, Canada’s leading tracking system. The list includes standard categories like hardcover fiction and nonfiction and paperback fiction and nonfiction, but also categories such as Canadian fiction and nonfiction, Children, Mystery, Medical and Law.
Powell’s Bestseller List
Powell’s Bestsellers List looks at the top-selling books of the week and includes a list of best sellers exclusive to Portland-area Powell’s stores. There are also categories for Staff Picks and Picks of the Month.
Barnes and Noble Bestsellers
Barnes and Noble’s top 100 book bestsellers displays the 100 books that, presumably it’s stores have sold the most copies of in the past week. The list is format agnostic, meaning that the books can be in any format (i.e. print only, print + ebook, or ebook only). There are several different categories to sort by, including Fiction, Biography, Law, Kids, Teens, Travel, and Religion. You can also sort the list by price.
Library Journal Best Sellers and Most Borrowed
The Library Journal best sellers list is a bit difficult to make sense of as it seems to rotate between specialty topics each month such as medicine, math, Asian history, etc. LJ also a a list that it looks at which books have been most borrowed and requested at public libraries across the United States. The list contains both fiction and nonfiction books and it’s an interesting look at what people are reading vs what they are buying. Unfortunately the link to the list changes monthly. To find the latest list do a web search for “library journal most borrowed books.”
Chicago Tribune Best-Sellers
The Chicago Tribune’s Best-Sellers List comprises the best-selling books in all the Midwest. The categories include hardcover fiction, hardcover nonfiction, and Chicago-area bestsellers.
National Public Radio Book Reviews
NPR compiles a weekly list of highly suggested books for readers, but since 2008, NPR has also published lists of the most popular books of the year. In 2017, their list had over 350 book titles recommended by NPR staff and critics. NPR’s list is not exactly a best seller list, it’s more like a selection of books that are most popular with NPR contributors and listeners. Books are separated by genre and staff favorites.
Bookpage Book Reviews
Unfortunately Bookpage does not compile a best sellers list. Instead it reviews a number of notable books each month. The reviews are informative, indepth and cover non-fiction, fiction, romance, mystery, teen, and children’s books.
For help finding some of great free books, many of which have appeared on one or more of these lists, visit JustKindleBooks’ free book page. This page is like a free, all-you-can-read buffet. Stock up.
