New York Times Best Sellers List for E-BOOKS???

Sure. Why not? And it seems some self-pubbed authors are making the list.

Oh my!

Should we be impressed?

Well, I don't know about impressed. It did make me want to go explore however. And so I did.
It should be common knowledge by now that the New York Times Best Selling print book list is determined by the number of books a publisher sells to bookstores. It should also be common knowledge that large publishers regularly ship tons of new releases to their large bookstores to ensure their numbers stay up, something small press and self-pubbed authors can't do. One, because they can't afford to play the big bookstores game of making books returnable and two, large bookstores won't order their books in large quantities. That's a deal they have with large publishers only.

Therefore the New York Times Best Sellers list for print books reflects which large publisher unloaded more books to their bookstores than say, the other large publishers that month. The number is not based on actual purchases of the books. There's no way to accurately track that.

Now lets look at how they're judging (or not judging) sales of ebooks. Here's what it says on the bottom of the list if you look:

E-book rankings reflect sales from leading online vendors of e-books in a variety of popular e-reader formats.

You don't say. Leading on-line vendors. Hmm . . . who would that be I wonder. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the very few on-line sites that cater to and are associated with large publishers. I noticed a few e-books on the list from authors who self-pubbed at Lulu. I thought, wow, they're considering books that Lulu sells. Then I decided that since all small press and self-pubbed authors end up on Amazon, whether they like it or not, that this is where the ranking comes from.

"Big deal," you say. "It still made the list."

You have a point there but the point is lost with me as I'll not list my ebooks on Amazon or Barnes & Noble because they still don't embrace small press or self-pubbed authors and never have. Well, to be fair, Amazon makes an attempt but usually succumbs to the barking big dog publishers when it comes down to it. Also both Amazon and Barnes & Noble take liberties with the e-books they list such as offering returns? or giving them away for free in an effort to sell their e-reader?

Therefore my ebooks will never show up on the New York Times ebook best seller's list even if I sell a million copies at my virtual book signing on March 20th. And neither will thousands of other authors who choose to distribute their work through sites that aren't considered "leading online vendors" and who don't take liberties with the work that they are only supposed to be distributing. EGADS!

And so it continues!!

So nope. For right now, I'm not impressed that a self-pubbed author makes the NYT best-sellers ebook lists but you can be impressed if you want to be.