The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States.[1][2] Published weekly in The New York Times Book Review,[1] the best-seller list has been published in the Times since October 12, 1931.[1] In recent years it has evolved into multiple lists in different categories, broken down by fiction and non-fiction, hardcover, paperback, and electronic, and different genres.
The list is based on a proprietary method that use sales figures, other data and internal guidelines that are unpublished—how the Times compiles the list is a trade secret.[3] In 1983 (as part of a legal argument) the Times stated that the list is not mathematically objective but rather editorial content. In 2017 a Times representative said that the goal is that the lists reflect authentic best sellers.[4] The list has been the source of controversy over the years.
Although the first best seller list in America was published in 1895, in The Bookman, a best seller list was not published in The New York Times until 36 years later with little fanfare on October 12, 1931.[5][6] It consisted of five fiction and four non-fiction books for New York City only.[6] The following month the list was expanded to eight cities, with a separate list published for each city.[6] By the early 1940s, fourteen city-lists were included. A national list was created on April 9, 1942, in The New York Times Book Review (Sundays) as a supplement to the regular city lists (Monday edition).[6] The national list was ranked according to how many times the book appeared in the city lists.[6] A few years later the city lists were eliminated entirely, leaving only the national ranking list, which was compiled according to "reports from leading booksellers in 22 cities".[6] This methodology of ranking by bookseller sales figures remains to this day although the exact data compilation process is a trade secret and has evolved over time.[3]
By the 1950s, The Times's list had become the leading best seller list for book professionals to monitor, along with that of Publishers Weekly.[6] In the 1960s and 70s, mall-based chain bookstores B. Dalton, Crown Books, and Waldenbooks came to the forefront with a business model of selling newly published best-sellers with mass-market appeal. They used the best-selling status of titles to market the books and not just as a measure of sales, thus placing increased emphasis on the New York Times list for book readers and book sellers.[6]
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