Oh yes, let's clear things up for those who don't bother to read how the New York Times Best Selling book list are compiled. This is for e-books.
These lists are an expanded version of those appearing in the August 28, 2011 print edition of the Book Review, reflecting sales for the week ending August 13, 2011.
Rankings reflect weekly sales for books sold in both print and electronic formats as reported by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles. The sales venues for print books include independent book retailers; national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; university, gift, supermarket and discount department stores; and newsstands. E-book rankings reflect sales from leading online vendors of e-books in a variety of popular e-reader formats."
Please note that the E-book rankings reflect sales from leading online vendors of e-books. This would be places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, places that smart publishers stay away from as both take liberties with e-books that only a publisher should have. They offer returns of e-books without asking the publisher and they automatically put an e-book into their lending library where buyers can lend out e-books to MANY friends for up to 14 days for FREE without asking the publisher. In Amazon's defense they do make an effort to tell you about the lending library but the window of opportunity to "opt out" is short lived and the link is broken and to the best of my knowledge no one has EVER been able to "opt out."
"E-book sales are tracked for fiction and general nonfiction titles. E-book sales for advice & how-to books, children’s books and graphic books will be tracked at a future date. Titles are included regardless of whether they are published in both print and electronic formats or just one format. E-books available exclusively from a single vendor will be tracked at a future date."
Oh right!!! LOLROFL Let's all hold our collective breath on that and see how many of us perish before it happens!
"The universe of print book dealers is well established, and sales of print titles are statistically weighted to represent all outlets nationwide. The universe of e-book publishers and vendors is rapidly emerging, and until the industry is settled sales of e-books will not be weighted."
Which means the only e-books making the list are e-books you publish through Amazon or B&N and not any from anywhere else--not until the industry settles anyway (that elusive date again.) So at least two "exclusive" distributors of e-books get to flaunt their stuff. Sound familiar?
"Among the categories not actively tracked at this time are: perennial sellers, required classroom reading, textbooks, reference and test preparation guides, journals, workbooks, calorie counters, shopping guides, comics, crossword puzzles and self-published books."
OMG! Did they actually type that!!!! Titles not included are self-published books! I think they did. Right up there with crossword puzzles, calorie counters--welcome to the publishing world author! ;D Your work is crap EVEN if you work with the best editor in the business and turn out an e-book that sells more than any on the New York Times Best Seller List! Big Dogs a barkin'! Step aside and listen to them howl!
"The appearance of a ranked title reflects the fact that sales data from reporting vendors has been provided to The Times and has satisfied commonly accepted industry standards of universal identification (such as ISBN13 and EISBN13 codes). Publishers and vendors of all ranked titles conformed in timely fashion to The New York Times Best Seller Lists requirement to allow for independent corroboration of sales for that week."
Need I say more. WHAT A CROCK! Yep, go grab your New York Time Best Seller e-book now. Support exclusivity and all it brings with it OR you can just go to the publisher's site and buy e-books there. Mine will be exclusively available at Black Bed Sheet Books--in ALL formats known to man DRM free because we all know if somebody wants to steal something there going to get it anyway so why make the paying customer suffer!
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