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The list is based on a proprietary method that use sales figures, other data and internal guidelines that are unpublished—how the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]
