We’re No. 12! A Best Seller’s Strange Tale
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Two days ago Barnes & Noble issued a press release celebrating the appearance of the book “Hippie” by Barry Miles on the New York Times bestseller list, a first for its Sterling Publishing division, which the bookselling chain bought in early 2003.
The story illustrates how best-seller lists don’t necessarily reflect reality.
The release (and an article in yesterday’s Times) touted that the book will appear at no. 12 on the nonfiction list in the September 12 edition of the Times – Sterling’s first-ever Times bestseller.
But that milestone was achieved only after the Times took the unusual step of re-categorizing which best-seller list the book belonged on.
Originally, “Hippie” had already appeared on the newspaper’s “Advice/How-to/Misc.” list, at position no. 9., but on the paper’s Web site only.
In most worlds a nine is better than a 12, but not here, because what matters to publishers is making the bestseller list in the newspaper’s print edition.
Book-publishing executives claim that it’s unusual for the Times to make such a switch. But director of public relations, Toby Usnik, says, “It is not that uncommon,” noting that “in most cases the moving around happens before a book actually appears on the list.” Mr. Usnik explains that in this case, “We did not have the book in hand – which is unusual – at the time it initially qualified for the extended list, and we categorized it based on descriptions and how we thought bookstores were handling it. Once we got the book, the editor of the best-seller lists and the Book Review editor looked it over and decided to change its categorization to general nonfiction.”
Odder still is that the online version of the newspaper’s list claims the book has been on the list for 5 weeks.
Also, according to a source at the newspaper, on the newest not-yet-published Times bestseller list, the book has dropped off the list again, so the story was old news before it was printed. On Barnes & Noble’s Web site, the book ranked only no. 241 yesterday.
(For more intrigue, competitor Amazon.com, which famously promises customers “30% off books over $15,” does not discount the $24.95 book at all.)
Perhaps most ironic still is that Barnes & Noble the bookseller would choose to trump landing on the Times list at all, particularly when the book isn’t on its own bestseller list. It was all the way back in 1999 that the chain attracted considerable attention when it stopped promoting and discounting Times bestsellers within its stores, in favor of its own bestseller list. At the time a spokesperson said, “It is a service we provide for our customer, so they have an up-to-the-moment idea of what other customers are reading.”
To understand how intriguing all this is it may be necessary to understand that strange way in which Times bestsellerdom is still the coin of a certain realm in book publishing – even though we all know it’s not any kind of actual measure of success. (Just the other day, an editor-in-chief was celebrating making the extended non-fiction list, with a book that has 15,000 copies in print.) Or maybe I’ve helped to make it more obvious.