Book Sense - Book Sense Bestseller Lists

Book Sense Bestseller Lists

The Book Sense bestseller program was developed to provide a method of calculating bestsellers better suited to independent bookstores than the lists provided by The New York Times and others. Two factors contribute to the differences. First, The New York Times lists include all book sales, including grocery stores, gift shops, independent bookstores, large chains, big box stores, and drug stores; where the Book Sense lists consider only sales from independent bookstores. Second, The New York Times lists include reports from publishers, which can "double-count" a book (the sale is reported once by the publisher and once by the retailer) and generate artificially high sales of popular new books when retailers and distributors purchase large numbers of books that may later be returned unsold to the publishers.

Book Sense publishes weekly lists for hardcover fiction, hardcover nonfiction, trade paperback fiction, trade paperback nonfiction, mass market paperback, "children's interest," children's illustrated, and children's fiction series. Category lists, which focus on a particular genre, are published less frequently.