Bestseller" Really Mean?

BOOK PUBLISHING What Does "Bestseller" Really Mean?

By Peter Bowerman

Book publishers rely on (or at least dream about) the economic boost of a title achieving popularity. However, the means by which books are declared successful can be anything but scientific. Author and self-publishing advocate Peter Bowerman explores the world of dubious bestseller lists, manufactured rankings and unreal reviews.

riter David Blum was perplexed. It was intriguing "weighting" going on for a book with a the late 1980s and Blum was research- healthy share of its 10,000-unit first printing still en ing the inner workings of The New route to bookstores when the "bestseller" mande was York Times bestseller list. He took par- quietly dropped on its shoulders. ticular notice of Allan Bloom's 1988 Wbook, "The Closing of the American Mind," which had "List Inflation" just been positively reviewed in the Times. Although a Over the years, the number of "bestseller" lists has •large percentage of the modest first printing of 10,000 grown: USA Today, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The copies hadn't even arrived in bookstores when the re- Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The' Wall Street view hit, the book suddenly showed up on The New York journal, Publishers Weekly, and plenty' of sub-lists within Times bestseller List. The only logical explanation Blum the Times' list itself. For authors, this proliferation of could find was that the book had done "incredibly well new lists has meant many more opportunities to earn at a few bookstores that The New York Times weights the coveted "bestseller" label. But, like inflation devalu- heavily in its survey.. .These would be the stores to ing currency, "Ust inflation" has similarly reduced the start with if you were thinking of outfoxing the Times true value of the "bestseller" designation. bestseller system." It was not exactly how most people Adding to the confusion is the fact that each list imagine a "bestseller" earns its designation. relies on widely varying sets of inputs. WLiile the Times' A bestselling book is the stuff of authors' fondest list reportedly draws on its 4,000 bookstores, others dreams. It is also what readers look for when deciding rely on far different sources: some track only indepen- where to spend their book dollars. However, given sto- dent bookstore sales, others only the top indies, others ries like the above, it is reasonable to ask, "Can the 'best- exclusively from big chain stores, and still other include seller' designation always be trusted?" Unfortunately, the online booksellers. The online booksellers them- thanks to less-than-honorable tactics on the part of selves track only their own sales. publishers, booksellers and authors, the answer is no. While such haphazard, shifting definitions of "bestseller" may strike many as a sloppy, indecipherable sys- r/ieUst tem, some think there's a method to the madness. As The gold standard Hst, of course, is the Times' list, Slate opined in a 1998 piece, "Book industry people don't which debuted in 1942, and whose creation is purport- want a single compilation of what's really selling best edly classified as a trade secret. According to Edwin throughout the country; they want a variety of lists that Diamond in his 1995 book Behind the Times., "the survey break down sales figures i n ways beneficial to them." encompasses over 3,000 bookstores as well as 'repre- sentative wholesalers with more than 28,000 other re- Growing Doubts tail outlets, including varietj' stores and supermarkets."' Nearly 20 years after Blum was scratching his head, the The bookstore Mst is reportedly now over 4,000. same doubts are alive and well. Marketing guru Seth A 2007 LMS Angeks Times article about the Times' listGodin is painfully unambiguous in his assessment. In wrote: "For years, skeptics have questioned the sound- an October 2007 blog post, he wrote: "The Times' list ness of the way it is compiled, tjpicaLly by ha\'ing mer- is completely fictional. Made up. Divorced from real- chants across the nation fill out questionnaires about it}'. The stated goal of the list is to find (and promote) which books are selling. Times staffers then 'weight' these books that Times editors want people to read, not books results according to whether they are from chain or in- that are actually selling a lot. (The editor of the Book dependent bookstores or other outlets; beyond that, the. Reviem told this to me years ago)." paper has declined to reveal the precise methodology." However, human nature suggests that if create a In the case of Blum's book, there was clearly some system that offers opportunities to manipulate the sys-

tem, plenty will try. Godin acknowledges as much: "[T] Ready-to-Go Reviews? he list is easier to manipulate than ever before. The identity of reporting stores is becoming easier to find To illustrate the magnitude of the problem, note the following email sent by an acquain- and the leverage -of being on the list is high enough tance of this writer: that authors can profit just by buying their own books in enough A good friend of mine, , has written a book, and Amazon is currently running a con- quantity" (emphasis added) test to determine the winner In its category. It would really help him out If you could go over to Amazon and write a good review of the book. The more good reviews he gets, the better Buying a High Ranking his chances of winning. I know he 'd really appreciate it. Diamond shares one such story in Behind the Times about The ethically challenged request was for a gushing review of the book, minus the incon- Al Neuharth, the former chairman of the Gannett venience of actually having to read'n. newspaper family. Neuharth's autobiography, Confessions An even more outrageous recent request included the message, "Would you be willing to of an S.O.B., ended up on the Times Bestseller list for give five stars and post a review for a friend's book? The review is written below, so you can seven weeks in 1990. Diamond wrote, "According to the just cut/paste." Above the review was the reminder "[Five stars please]." Words fail. TSR [Washington] Post, the Gannett Foundation, a nonprofit half a million; not once had it appeared on our best- education fund headed by Neuharth.. .spent §40,000 to seller list. Whereas other ddes that one couldn't even purchase two thousand copies of the book..." remember — because they would bob up to the surface In Book History, Volume 3 (2000), Ezra Greenspan of the list for a week, disappear, sink and be replaced by and Jonathan Rose offer up a few similar "authors- another one — were hogging the list." buying-up-their-own-books" stories, citing, in addi- tion to Al Neuharth, Jacqueline Susann {Valley of the More Skeptics Dolls) and Wayne Dyer (Your Erroneous Zones). Plus thi, sBook promotion guru John Kremer, author of 700/ one: "A consulting firm connected to authors Michael Ways to Market Your Books, and founder of a popular site Treacy and Fred Wiersema reportedly spent more than for independent publishers (www.bookmarket.com), is $200,000 to buy about ten thousand copies of their equally pointed in his criticism of the list, writing, "The book. The Discipline of Market headers.. .The book madeNew York Times bestseller list is essentially a work of the Times list for fifteen weeks." fiction. As a result, it can be — and is — manipulated But booksellers are playing their own litde games by those who know how the list is compiled. Publishers as well. As Greenspan and Rose observe, "... [TJhere is do it all the time." litde to prevent retailers and wholesalers from deliber- Several years ago, Kremer, known as a strong ately or inadvertently misrepresenting sales, something champion of litde "David" independent publishers up that appears to happen with some regularity As one against big "Goliath" publishing houses, began offering former bookseller told me in an interview, "We were a course to authors hungering for that ultimate literary reporting to several bestseller lists, and if we had an accolade entided, "How to Create a New York Times awful lot of books to sell, we'd tend to put that one on or Amazon.com Bestseller." He markets it for $497. there in hopes that people would see it, and [say], 'oh Similar courses offering success with Amazon now boy, gotta have that.'" abound in the publishing world, sporting price tags of $2000 and up. Unlisted Bestsellers With the "Make Your Book an Amazon #1 Best Alan Sorenson, who teaches economics at Stanford Seller!" campaigns, the formula is similar across the Business School, has studied the effect of bestseller lists board: Offering prospective buyers a pile of freebies — on sales of hardcover fiction. Sorenson used Nielsen ebooks, reports, etc. — authors try to maximize their BookScan to examine strong-selling books that hadn't book's sales on one specific day in order to drive it to made the list. BookScan uses reports from 6,500 retail #1 (or at least die Top 10) — even for a few minutes oudets to track most actual retail book sales nationwide — and earn promotionally valuable bragging rights. — as opposed to the Neiv York Times, which samples Authors will attempt to harness the power of "viral sales from just a small number of stores. marketing" via mass emails, urging recipients to for- In an article in a 2005 issue of Stanford Business, writ- ward the appeal to as many lists as possible. er Marina Krakovsky reported on a surprising discov- ery: "...in the two years he studied, Sorensenfound 109 Instant "Better Book" different books that failed to make the Times list even though In the minds of many publishing industry purists, what Nielsen reported they sold more copies than other titles on the these authors are attempting to do is delude themselves Times' list'' (emphasis added) and others into believing they've written better books "On NPR's "All Things Considered" in October than in fact they have. After all, even a Top 10 bestseller 2007, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of die Sunday New York must be a good book, right? Of course, it doesn't work Times Book Review, and home of the Times' bestseller that way, any more than giving a kid an A for C or D list, commented on the truly - though unacknowl- schoolwork will make the kid truly believe it's deserved. edged - bestseller, "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides: Not surprisingly, Kremer, found himself on the de- "Hundreds of thousands had been sold — well over fensive after a blog post where he justified his system.

Volume 8, Number 24 • The Seybold Report • Copyright ©2008 RISI Inc., all rights reserved. BOOK PUBLISHING offering up such snippets as, "I know these lists can breaks the Top 10, even for an hour, bragging rights are be manipulated. I've worked with several authors who solidified, resuldng in the proliferadon of the "Amazon have done it..." and "Such campaigns are simply work- Bestseller" claims. ing within the system as it is set..." One reader, refer- Molehills From Mountains ring specifically to the Amazon bestseller component, accused him of being little more than a "flim-flam art- Internadonal bestselling (by some measures) author, M.J. ist" offering "fake Amazon ratings." Rose, in a comment made to Kremer's blog post, un- Circling the wagons, Kremer wrote: "If the NYT derscored the ephemeral nature — and by extension, bestseller list could be worked the same way, with very the reladve meaninglessness — of Amazon rankings. litde cost in money and time, more people would be She quoted a publisher who'd weighed in on her blog, doing that as well. But right now, the NYT list manipu- who wrote: "A publishing colleague shared that one lation does cost a lot more money and time, which the of their authors had appeared on NPR's "Fresh Air" New York publishers do all the time. Both lists, you can that same week. Before the interview, the book ranked say have been cheated, spammed, and manipulated. But 36,162 [on Amazon]. The day of the interview, it hit apparently it's okay to do so with die NYT list as long 300. The following day, it reached 80 and appeared on as you spend a lot of money and time. Why is one 'ma- the Movers & Shakers list. And, after all that, how many did it sell at Amazon? 47 copies." nipulation' worse than die other? Why is one ignored where the other [Amazon] scandalizes people?" "Everyone knows how few books it takes to get a low number in any given hour. You can be number 200 How DOES Amazon Work? one hour and number 300,000 six hours later. It means Amazon is remarkably cryptic about the inner workings you sold 30 books that day because you were on the ra- of their rankings system, dedicating just three short dio. So what? You can't put 'Amazon Bestseller' in your paragraphs to the subject in their FAQs. The gist? "The CV or on the cover of you book. It's an empt)' claim." lower the number, die higher the sales for that pardcu- It is, but in these dmes, clearly, it isn't. lar item. The calculation is based on Amazon.com sales Echoing an earlier discussion. Rose, referring to and is updated each hour to reflect recent and historical an email she'd received hawking an Amazon bestseller sales of every item sold on Amazon.com." This doesn't program for $2000, offered this jokingly serious aside: tell us much. "...take that same amount of money and buy a whole Brent Sampson, President and CEO of Outskirts lot of your own books all at once, in the middle of the Press Publishiiig, has studied Amazon more carefully night where there's not much book buying going on. than most, and notes that the process is, "more con- You'll get your low Amazon number and you'll get a lot voluted than they let on. Only die top 10,000 books of books for...proniodonal purposes." are updated every hour [the rest, daily] and die rank- Sadly, we're now living in The Age of Expediency. ing does not depend upon the actual number of books How you get somewhere is far less important than sim- sold, but rather, on a comparison against the sales fig- ply getdng there, period. Tricks, gimmicks, and cutdng ures of the other 9,999 books widiin that same hour... corners are all acceptable strategies for achieving com- hypothedcally, a book that held a ranking of 2,000 at 2 mercial success. And once the ethical bar is lowered, it p.m. and 3,000 at 3 p.m., might hold a 4,000 ranking at seems anything goes. 4 p.m., even if it actually sold MORE books between 3 and 4 than it did between 2 and 3." Responsibility to Readers Amazon's system is such, that, according to All this brings us to the crux of the \ssue.: public perception Sampson, it's "possible for a newly-released book to and the responsibilit)' to the reader of that bestseller list, outrank an older established tide, even though the ac- "#1 Amazon Best Seller!" designadon or book review. tual sales figures for the latter far exceed the former." If one sees a "bestseller" designadon — and knows nothing about how it came about — the assumpdon Few Sales, Big Jump is that it's a really good book, not the result of smoke and Sampson uses the example of a book leaping from mirrors by an author or bookseller, nor from some tor- 900,000 to 200,000. Given how slow or stagnant those tured short-term process of intense lobbying and out- other 700,000 books' sales likely are, "one or two or- right bribery to create the illusion of bestseller status. ders are sufficient to catapult a ranking." Sampson also Fortunately, mediocre books, regardless of the games discusses "phenomenon" books, defined as dtles which publishers, booksellers and authors play, never have long leap even more dramatically, from high 100,000's to lifespans. They will never benefit from the invaluable lower lOOO's, in 24 hours or less, adding diis clincher, word-of-mouth publicity' that accrues to truly solid tides, "usually due to some concentrated marketing initiatives." never earn kudos from those whose words really matter, (emphasis added) and never hope to garner serious industry recognidon. As Sampson observes, "Since Amazon's sales his- As list infladon and economic realides erode the tory for that dde doesn't support the leap, the spike impact of dubious ranking systems, publishers would occurs and then quickly drops again." However, if it Continued on page 14

Examining the env^ironmental impact environmental awareness efforts. In 2007, The report uses an evocative term for the MPA announced a public awareness the bottom-line result from such a study: "An of what one does every day and from which cannpaign aimed at getting more people to LCA should cover the entire life-cycle of the one derives an income can't be an easy or recycle magazines. product, including extracting, and processing comfortable process. It must be an especial- ly unappealing given the troubled financial The MPA also suggested that magazines the raw materials, manufacturing, transpor- situations that many magazines find them- lise more recycled paper. In 2007, Nina tation, and distribution of the final product link, then president and CEO of MPA, and recycling and final fate of the product selves in these days. So any magazine pub- suggested in a speech at an industry event and byproducts. The net emission of waste • lishing company that is willing to attempt a that magazine publishers should use more (i.e. greenhouse gases, solid waste, air pollu- complete analysis should be congratulated; certified paper to produce magazines. If tion, etc.) is referred to as 'product shadow.'" they are setting an example that the rest more magazine publishers used recycled pa- The product shadow of two magazines of the industry should follow. Producing a per, the net effect would be substantial. The published by Time Inc., Time and InStyle, are special Earth Day issue on recycled paper Environmental Defense Fund estimated similar to those of Discover and Backpacker. every April or May isn't enough. Magazine that each ton of recycled fiber that displaces Direct comparisons are difficult to make publishers need to push forward with real a ton of virgin fiber used in coated ground because all of the details of the Discover reforms of the manufacturing process and wood paper (stock used in magazines) re- and Backpacker studies have not been made consider how they can offset impacts that duces net greenhouse gas emission by 47% public. Unlike those two studies, however, cannot be eliminated. and cuts párdculate emissions by 28%. the Heinz Center report was able to make Magazines, in the past, have been reluc- its calculations based on specifics such as Co-op America, an advocacy group, tant to use recycled paper — saying it's too where the trees were harvested and where estimated that if all North American maga- expensive compared to virgin fiber stocks the paper was manufactured. Other studies zine publishers increased their use of re- or that they can't get the quality and selec- rely on industry-wide estimates for these cycled paper to 30%, the net result would tion they require. Yet, they can't afford, in details. The in-depth nature of the Heinz be a reduction of 1.7 billion pounds of more ways than one, to continue business Report is useful in so far as the report is greenhouse gases released into the air, ac- as usual. Taking a note from Backpacker's a model for how such studies should be cording to their release. This is about the carbon-neutral playbook, maybe it's time to done, but the results are specific to the two same amount of greenhouse gases emit- encourage readers to read electronic ver- publications at that time and are not easily ted by 153,894 cars in a year. The group sions of the magazine or move sections to extrapolated for other publications. maintains a Web site for magazine publish- the Web. Perhaps it's time to realize that if ers designed to help them learn more about Like the other studies, though, the pa- enough publishers use recycled papers or using recycled paper. On the site is a list of per manufacturing and transportation por- responsibly sourced virgin fiber stock, the magazines that have made a commitment tions of the life cycle are the two biggest price for both will come down. In the short- to use recycled paper. elements of the overall impact. During the term, magazine publishers may have to pay The PPA has taken a more aggressive time frame covered by this study (2001), more. In the not-so-long-term and by tak- stance than the MPA regarding the environ- Time Inc. did not use any recycled paper ing a hard look at what they print and ship, ment impact of printing. The PPA has orga- for printing these two magazines. The re- when and how, they can save money, please nized events for members on this issue and port concluded that the net product shad- readers, and help the environment. TSR is working on the first fuU life-cycle carbon ow of Time magazine is 1.17 t CO^-eq/ton footprint calculator for magazine publish- and for InStyle it is 1.11 t CO^-eq/ton. The majority of the ink on paper man- ers. So far, publishing companies have re- What Does "Bestseller" Really Mean? lied on outside agencies and consultants for ufactured for the publication of these two - Continued from page 10 help in such calculations. Having a standard, magazines was, at the time of the study, reliable calculator would help encourage ending up in landfills. Such a finding must do well to consider other strategies for publishers to attempt their own analysis. have provoked serious evaluations and con- success. Other than the obvious (focusing versations at Time, Inc., and the publishing on truly good books), they must embrace Peering at Product Shadows company has been active in efforts to en- the collaborative nature of Web 2.0, and include their audience as real participants Heinz's "Following the Paper Trail" report courage recycling of magazines. However, in the review and word-of-mouth process. does not use the term "carbon footprint," it behooves every publisher to examine the This will dramatically simplify marketing preferring instead to use the term "life pdnt-to-landfiU ratio and take steps to re- tasks, and eliminate the need to prop up a cycle analysis" (LCA), which it defines as duce the overproduction at the front end tide that can't stand on its own. TSR the sum total of the environmental burden of the process. Even taking into consid- of the manufacturing process. One of the erations the economies of scale involved major benefits of doing such an analysis, in offset printing and the brand aware- Peter Bowerman is a professional copywriter, a self- the report points out, is that it can be used ness that newsstand presence supports, it publishing coach, and the self-published author of to identify and evaluate opportunities to re- can't make good economic sense to print the "Well-Fed Writer" titles, which have 52,000 cop- duce waste and improve efficiencies. Any and transport so many copies that a single ies in print. He has chronicled his self-publishing sue-1 study or analysis that is not as comprehen- reader never touches the majority of cop- cess in the award-winning 2007 title The Well-fed sive is not, by definition, going to be as ef- ies. Publishers might as well send most of Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a full-Time fective a tool for these efforts. the delivery trucks directly to the landfill. Living. For more details, visit www.wellfedsp.com.