Book Cover Chaos | The New York Times Bestsellers

Nowadays, it seems like every book is #1 on some review list, or that every author is a #1 bestseller. They plaster it over the book cover, the author’s and publisher’s social media, the promotional material… But what does that phrase mean?

Bestseller is a compound word: literally, one that has sold the best. Every single purchase of a book is noted on the sales list for the store it was bought from. The most sales of a book will earn it a ranking on at least one of the bestseller lists, classifying it as a bestseller.

There are a lot of bestseller lists because of how each list divides their categories, as well as the frequency at which they update. I will specifically be focusing on The New York Times lists, but there are also lists such as USA Today, IndieBound Bestsellers, Publishers Weekly, and so on and so forth.

The New York Times bestseller lists divides itself based on genre, age, and book format, and it is updated every Tuesday per industry standard. This means that they have eleven lists, each of which contain ten to fifteen books. That’s 140 books each week!…Or is it?

Just like any other ranking, it’s natural for books to remain on the list for multiple weeks, but go up and down in the rankings. This is why most lists indicate if a book has risen or fallen in the rankings since last week. Look at the Children’s Series list for December 9, 2023:

Because the adaptation of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes came out on November 17th, its original series The Hunger Games rose to #1. But this week, Diary of a Wimpy Kid pushed to #1 while The Hunger Games fell to #2. This could be due to a few factors. Maybe the hype of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes dying down after a month; perhaps parents are buying up Diary of a Wimpy Kid in preparation for Christmas. The point of this example is to show how the week’s lists are always subject to change.

Even with some books and authors reigning for weeks on end due to their natural pop culture influence, there is a good amount of fluctuation. A majority of publishers will release new books on Tuesdays in order to maximize the amount of book sales for that week’s lists. This causes new books to jump up in the rankings, as backlist titles aren’t as likely to have that ‘surge’ of purchases. Of course, there are always exceptions – It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover published in 2016, but it regained popularity in 2021 with BookTok’s rave reviews. It debuted on The New York Times bestseller list for Paperback Trade Fiction by January 2022, where it remains as of December 9, 2023.

Even considering the books that remain on the lists for multiple weeks, that’s thousands of opportunities in a single year. Additionally, the perception that every book is a bestseller can be attributed to the marketing that comes with being on a bestseller list. Instead of hunting through the literal millions of books released each year, readers will typically rely on their bookstore’s inventory. Bookstores, in turn, rely on the demand of the customer. If a book is selling well, bookstores are more likely to stock it, which gives more readers the opportunity to purchase it. This in turn will continue its sales and give it another spot on the bestseller list.

Simply put, there appear to be a lot of New York Times bestselling books because the industry is built to promote their own bestselling achievements to sell even more books. This is why it is so important for a variety of bestseller lists to exist: It gives more books and authors the opportunity to sell their books and make a living.