Every time I walk into a bookstore or look for books online, it seems like every novel has the words “New York Times bestseller” in big, bold letters across the cover. If the book itself isn’t a bestseller, then more often than not, the author is still a New York Times bestselling author. It feels like nearly every book I see has those words smeared across the cover. It begs the question of how so many writers can write bestselling novels and if the achievement has almost lost all meaning.
The New York Times bestseller list is less about the quality of a book and more about how well a book will sell. I think a lot of people would assume that the two are mutually exclusive. It is easy to think that because a book sells well, the quality of writing must also be good, but more often than not, the books that become best sellers just have really good marketing and advertising.
There are plenty of books that I have read with the words “New York Times Bestseller” written on the front, and after reading, I cannot comprehend how it had sold so well. In addition to this, it seems like a lot of books I have never even heard of end up on the list, despite never hearing of their popularity. In one case, several years ago, this exact question was investigated when the novel, Handmaid for Mortals by Lani Sarem, was the number one bestseller above the highly popular book, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. After further investigation, it was uncovered that someone had ordered Handmaid for Mortals in bulk, at multiple book stores, in order to get the book to the top of the bestseller list. After uncovering the discrepancies, “the NYT changed its list, removing Sarem’s title and putting Thomas’s novel” (The Guardian).
This is the only case we know of where an author has unfairly gained status as a bestselling author, but who’s to say that it hasn’t happened before without anyone finding out? It seems all too easy for an author or publishing company to buy their own books to gain the title of bestseller, and then perpetuate more sales after getting the accomplishment on their cover.
Not only is it entirely too easy for someone to cheat the system and become a bestselling author, but the New York Times bestseller list can be pretty deceiving if you don’t know exactly how they choose books and their process, which is kept relatively under wraps. When looking at the New York Times website itself, they claim that “Institutional, special interest, group or bulk purchases, if and when they are included, are at the discretion of The New York Times Best-Seller List Desk editors based on standards for inclusion that encompass proprietary vetting and audit protocols, corroborative reporting and other statistical determinations” (The New York Times). So essentially, this statement suggests that there is no real way of knowing whether or not these books are legit or not, because it is under the “discretion” of the editors putting together these lists.
Another thing to note is that the New York Times best-selling list is more focused on the popularity of a book within a short period of time, rather than the steady popularity of a book over a long period of time. In order to get a book on the list, they “[require] an author to make a minimum of 5000 book sales (higher, depending on the list) in a single week across diverse retailers and from multiple geographic locations” (Novlr). Based on this information, we know that the list is less about long-term popularity and more about a week’s worth of popularity, which is what makes it much easier for authors to get on the list than one might think. Since the list changes every week, authors are able to become best-selling authors if their novel does extremely well one week.
In my opinion, the list itself seems almost arbitrary and is used more as a marketing tool than a truly unbiased list of well-written novels. Since there is so much secrecy and inconsistency surrounding the New York Times bestseller list, I think it has lost a lot of its meaning. While I still think it is quite the accomplishment to become a best-selling author, and it is something to be proud of, I think that there should be more transparency around how one becomes a best-selling author, as well as more common knowledge around the list itself.