Talk:The New York Times Best Seller list

"bestseller"

Based on the description on the Times website as a Best Seller list, in spite of the spelling bestseller in the URL, I suggest this article be moved to "New York Times best seller list", or "New York Times Best Seller List". --Blainster 14:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

contradicts

This page contradicts itself on how books get on the list. 68.1.138.234 02:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

min copies

What is the minimum total number of copies sold of a book that made its way to the New York Times Best Seller list? --Roland 23:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I would imagine it varies from week to week and from category to category. One of the reasons why publishers have unspoken agreements to avoid releasing their big works on the same week as each other. 72.133.206.223 (talk) 22:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

copies

The section on marketing to the list seems weak--but not sure how to fix. It's hard to imagine any publisher not doing it, there is no source given for the particular examples given--Barte 14:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC).

"List" or "list"?

I've seen various sources mention the list with a capital L, and various using a lowercase l. However, I cannot find any usage on the NY Times web site of the entire phrase, so I don't know which capitalization they use. Which is correct? If the l should be capitalized, then the page should also be moved. -- Kicking222 13:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

On the bottom of The Times's Best Seller website is a section called "About the Best Sellers." In it, the word is capitalized. It is also plural. Probably this page's title should be changed to "The New York Times Best Seller Lists." ask123 (talk) 18:45, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Agree on the capitalization. Most of the time it's used in the singular (common usage rule) and also standard Wikipedia to use singular (thought not set in stone just general guideline). We can re-word the article text for multiple lists. -- GreenC 00:45, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Rewrite

The rewrite took out negative speculation, but it added a lot of fawning puffy positive statements. We shouldn't make statements like "most-influential" if we can't support them. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Because the statements were un-sourced speculations. If you want to start a criticism section feel free, the most famous and well known is the Blatty case, but that was almost 25 years ago. The truth is, how they make the list is a trade secret and open to change at any time, so there is not going to much material of value beyond peoples opinions, usually angry authors who didn't make the list. I'm not sure what "fawning puffy positive statements" means, care to provide some examples? As for "most influential", please remove "most-influential" from the article. -- Stbalbach 01:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't advocating the inclusion of the removed statements. I'm advocating the removal of all unsupported statements, and I took a couple out. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Online retailers

Oddly, the List doesn't seem to take into account books bought on Amazon.com. I have a friend whose book would have made the Times List had they counted the Amazon numbers, but they don't, so his book missed out getting on the list. I don't know how one can extrapolate from this to make a definitive statement about the secret process, but I thought I'd mention it. I can provide more details (with published references if desired) if requested (but you should probably contact me via my Talk page since I may not remember to look at this page again). Softlavender (talk) 07:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Defining "books"

I think the entry for the New York Times best seller list could be improved if there was a better definition of what a book is. I love the new categories they have created but why isn't the Bible considered a book? What are the sales each year of the Bible? How many other books are not considered in the definition?

Bestsellerplus (talk) 21:32, 3 July 2008 (UTC) Bestsellerplus

List of New York Times Fiction Best Sellers

Just created. Ikip (talk) 21:09, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

needs a redirect

...From NY Times Bestseller listPär Larsson (talk) 01:29, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Done. For future reference, just click on the red link of a desired redirect and enter:

#REDIRECT[[The New York Times Best Seller list]]

Save and done. Green Cardamom (talk) 02:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 22 April 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn GreenC 18:01, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

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The New York Times Best Seller list → The New York Times Best Seller List – "List" should be capitalized per discussion that was first noted in 2006 or ~10 years ago. Link to discussion. GreenC 00:49, 22 April 2016 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 17:46, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose – per book usage and the cited sources, New York Times best seller list would be best. Even the list itself is just titled "Best Sellers". Dicklyon (talk) 02:41, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

The NYT Book Review column "Inside the List" uses capital List. The Ngram data is close and confirms a lack of consensus, as mentioned in the previous conversation 10 years ago. It doesn't make sense on the one hand they call it "Best Sellers" (capital plural) then suggest it would be best to use "best seller" (lower-case singular) based on a random selection of books found on Google that gives one or the other version a slight edge in numbers. Also the red and green lines are suspiciously tracking the same suggesting they are coming from the same books and there is some artifact of how Ngram works. -- GreenC 03:50, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

There's no "Best Sellers List" or anything like it in the "Inside the List" column you linked. And where they call it "Best Sellers" is a title, not in the text. We could use Best Sellers (New York Times) if you want to go that way. Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

It's called "Best Sellers" I own a paper copy of the review and it's all over the place, it's not just the title, it's the name. The column "Inside the List" is about the Best Sellers list, that's why they call it "Inside the List". -- GreenC 13:45, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose—Green, Dick's point, "Best Sellers", is the clincher. And besides, if there's a lack of consensus among sources, we go with our own house style. Also, remember that ngram picks up titles (books, chapters, sections) that the source's own style (unlike ours) caps. This can be worked around to some extent by surveying variants (e.g. open with a preposition, such as "in"). Tony (talk) 06:46, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

We title things based on most common usage. "new york times best seller list" in whatever capitalization is by far most common usage. -- GreenC 13:45, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that "new york times best seller list" in whatever capitalization is the correct title, even though the official name is Best Sellers (plural), per evidence in book usage. It's pretty clear that this is descriptive, not a proper name, so let's treat it as such. Dicklyon (talk) 14:29, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose, but move to different title. It's a made-up fake name, if you capitalize it. That actually goes for the present title, too. Acceptable names are (from most to least preferable):
  1. The New York Times Best Sellers or New York Times Best Sellers. (That "The" is arguably superfluous, per WP:THE, but more WP:CONSISTENT with The New York Times, and we tend to keep "The" in titles of published works, especially when other sources do so; more of them do so for The New York Times, like The Times of London, than for most other newspapers, though this verges fairly close to a MOS:TM promotionalism problem.) This is a concatenation of two proper-name titles, which should be rendered in prose as The New York Times "Best Sellers" per MOS:TITLE (e.g. 'on The New York Times "Best Sellers" list for 17 weeks'. This version prioritizes WP:CONCISE over CONSISTENT. Like the second option it is both WP:PRECISE and WP:RECOGNIZABLE.
  2. The New York Times bestseller list or New York Times bestseller list. This is a proper-name title followed by a WP:DESCRIPTDIS, a common-noun phrase describing something provided by the thing with the given title. It is possibly also the WP:COMMONNAME, at least in spoken usage. How people write about the "Best Sellers" column of The New York Times is actually wildly inconsistent, and I'm skeptical the true common name could be determined with any accuracy (and GreenC's attempts to use Ngrams are faulty, as someone else pointed out above). This format could and arguably should be used to normalize the titles of our articles on all such things, since readers are not apt to remember the exact names of these columns, and they may change over time. Note two points of grammar: A) Compound the multi-word modifier, since the bestseller spelling appears most common today. Otherwise it should be hyphenated per standard English-language treatment of compound-but-not-merged modifiers. B) "Bestseller" (or "best-seller") is singular in such a construction (a harbormaster keeps a ship roster not a ships roster; your company offers an employee extension directory when you phone in, not an employees extensions directory; etc.). This version prioritizes CONSISTENT over PRECISE, assuming it were applied consistently. At any rate, it should not be "best seller list" or "best sellers list"; it's a list of bestselling a.k.a. best-selling books, not a "best list of sellers", or a "list of people who are the best at selling", and a title that introduces such an ambiguity is a failure).
  3. Maybe Best Sellers (The New York Times) or Best Sellers (New York Times), but this should be eschewed per WP:NATURALDIS policy. There would need to be a compelling reason to go with this version, and I can't think of one; there is nothing else that could be called by either of the previously listed titles, and using WP:PARENDIS here does nothing useful for readers. This is less CONCISE than the version without the interruptive punctuation, is less RECOGNIZABLE, and is also a much less likely search term.

Generally, be consistent with other named achievements: '2009 CFA Supreme Grand Champion in the breed group, and Best in Show at the WCF International Cat show in 2009 and 2010', vs. 'a breed champion, and multi-year winner of all-breeds top honors at international cat shows'; 'won an Oscar for "Best Adapted Screenplay"', vs. 'won a best-screenplay (adapted) Academy Award' – do not capitalize made-up alternative names for official titles.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:09, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

"GreenC's attempts to use Ngrams are faulty, as someone else pointed out above" .. User:SMcCandlish, who was it that pointed that out? -- GreenC 17:43, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

That's a complex and learned response. You hand waived commonname as not possible to determine, but common sense and basic checks say otherwise. There is nothing wrong with Ngram to determine the basic form of the name since it has such a clear majority, it runs into trouble with capitalizations where the majority is not as clear. At the end of the day we still have COMMONNANE as the driving factor and there is little doubt that "NYT best seller list" is most common. The only real ambiguities is if its plural or singular best seller, or capital or lower case with some words. -- GreenC 17:57, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm going to self-close (withdraw) as no consensus. If someone thinks otherwise you can re-open it. If you would prefer a different version of a name, other than the one proposed in the OP, open a different move request. -- GreenC 18:01, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Right wing attacks

Regarding this edit [1]. Just about every publisher of right-wing material in the USA attacks The New York Times Best Seller list for being biased due to its supposed left-leanings and therefore there is a conspiracy against right-wing publishers. This particular case they tried to make it looks scientific with a study, but the study is not peer reviewed nor is it accurate - they look only at Nielsen ratings and not the rest of the metrics used by NYT. It's a bogus, fake, flawed study whose only purpose is to support a conspiracy theory. It's non-notable, conspiratorial smear. Note that most of the criticisms in this article were added by me, I have no problem criticizing the NYT, but they need to be legitimate reliable sources, and not made up conspiracies supported by bogus flawed "studies" by a publisher with a conflict of interest. -- GreenC 00:07, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

The Times has now responded so it's getting wider coverage in AP (in the correct controversies section in chronological order). I've added a few sentences to place it in context as part of a larger long-term attack by Republicans and conservative publishers. -- GreenC 15:56, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Clarification in lead section

As for the edit comment that "No one ever claimed [the list] was only based on objective sales" I would answer that the in the name itself of the list, "New York Times Best Seller list", there is an inherent claim that the list is based exclusively on sales figures. Due to the misleading naming of this list and considering its status as "preeminent", a one sentence clarification in the article lead section is warranted that summarizes what the NYT themselves say list is not and what they say it is. --Bensin (talk) 20:50, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm really not on board with bringing up the proceedings of a legal case from the early 1980s into the lead section. It looks like cherry picking and is not relevant to the average person ie. the law is it own universe of strange realities. The whole point of that legal argument is to protect the Time under Free Speech, a Constitutional right, because the case was headed to the Supreme Court. Despite that one court case, the Times is making a systematic best effort, one based in the mathematics of counting sales. They say as much in each issue in fine print at the bottom of each page. It is misleading to assert so strongly they don't do this. That they make editorial decisions on the margins, or occasionally, is true but not the same as saying it is always and completely mathematically unobjective. -- GreenC 21:56, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

I appreciate your constructive post here and I think I understand where you're coming from.

I'm thinking if the NYT (the "News Surveys" department) have the sales numbers and choose to disregard the mathematics and exclude certain titles, to whichever extent and for whatever reason, then that cannot be called a systematic best effort.

Looking at NYT webpage[2], they say about methodology that "Rankings on weekly lists reflect sales for the week ending February 16, 2019." There is a link to a page dedicated to the methodology[3] but that page doesn't say which factors matter other than sales. Instead it goes into detail how the sales numbers are compiled, giving the impression that those numbers are what counts. It does mention "proprietary vetting and audit protocols" for inclusion of bulk purchases, but such entries are said to be marked in the list. It also mentions "categories not actively tracked", but doesn't say anything about exclusions of single titles from the list (except free-trial or low-cost audiobooks). (If the fine print you refer to says something else, could you provide that text here?)

The examples listed in this article that are not related to bulk purchases (i.e. Legion, 12 Rules for Life, The Rational Bible: Exodus) appear not to be editorial decisions on the margins but rather exclusions.

If the NYT were to claim that the list is editorial content only in the context of the law then that would make little sense to me. The law is the ultimate arbitrator in a civil society and I would even say that a legal stance is about as official a statement can get. The NYT are free to choose whichever legal defence strategy they want. Had they not excluded the book Legion then they would not have had to choose a legal strategy at all. The NYT are also free to revise that stance at any time.

Alternatively they can depart from the editorial list and instead publish a list based solely on sales, just as the name indicates. But until they do, the statement from the legal argument is a valid and necessary clarification that is very much relevant to anybody reading the article.

I added a statment from 2017 in the lead, but I'd be interested to read a detailed explanation from the NYT stating both what the list is and what it is not as well as clarifications on the methodology. --Bensin (talk) 06:46, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Look, any sort of ranking system is going to have manual adjustments. The vaunted Google "algorithm" has many manual adjustments. The US News and World Report college rankings also. They all do, I read a book about it called Weapons of Math Destruction. Even our Wiki statistics do manual tweaks, those page view counts are not what you think. It's a strawman to attack these sorts of things on that level. They all make a systematic effort: there is a system, it is based on math (counting), and it has some manual tweaks to get closer to the truth of what the list is trying to achieve. To attack the Times on this level, in the lead section, comes across pedantic or partisan. It's worth mentioning in the article itself but not making such a big deal in the lead section. -- GreenC 17:31, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

I am not aware of anyone opposing the NYT weighting the sales sample data to produce a sales ranking as accurate as possible. But any manipulation other than, like arbitrarily excluding titles in disregard of the math, is not a tweak that will get closer to the truth but will rather obscure the truth. My point here is that the list "The New York Times Best Seller list" in the name itself contains an inherent claim to be based solely on sales when in reality it is not. That, in combination with the leading statement that it is "widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books", is why the clarification is imperative in the lead. --Bensin (talk) 10:33, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

How to search

Business fable includes a list of works in this genre, with a separate section for books which have achieved New York Times Best Seller status. I am not sure how to verify this status, as I cannot find a way to search best seller archives. How can I do this? Also, is it even appropriate to have a separate section based on this status? I imagine my questions are applicable to other articles as well and editors here have more knowledge with which to answer these questions. Daask (talk) 19:07, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Could try this but it's not searchable and it only includes the fiction and non-fiction lists. If you have access to the NYT could search their website. -- GreenC 19:25, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Weeks between dates

Regarding diff. The date range 6 August 2008 to 10 March 2016 equates to 396 days and 1 day (source). Thus the 410 weeks reported in the paper is off by 14 weeks (410-396). I think omitting the number of weeks is the best option as suggested by User:Maxwell Gerald Anderson. -- GreenC 19:14, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Information Literacy and Scholarly Discourse

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 June 2022 and 29 July 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thotfuldiscourse (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Thotfuldiscourse (talk) 18:52, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Missing history before 1984

1. The inaugural list named five fiction and four nonfiction books. Were they listed separately (two lists)? Were fiction and nonfiction separated throughout the "other cities" era?
2. Did the "national" list debut in April 1942 with fiction and nonfiction, no other distinctions (two lists)? If not, then what?
3. When, probably between 1942 and 1984, did separate coverage of hardcover and paperback books begin? As two categories, or as three with a combined print list? --P64 (talk) 18:32, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
4. When did the list(s) adopt a fixed length, and when has that been revised? Eg, was there a fixed Top Ten or Top 15 at the "national" debut in April 1942? --P64 (talk) 18:44, 3 February 2023 (UTC)