Anyone who has walked into a book store has almost undoubtedly seen a big sign that says “New York Times Best Seller” which has famously been the gold standard for books. These days though, the title may be “missing context.”
A recent study by The Economist found that “books by conservative publishers are seven percentage points less likely to make it onto New York Times weekly bestseller lists than books by other publishers with similar sales figures.”
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When Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson was first rising in popularity. His book, 12 Rules for Life, never made it on the New York Times Best Sellers list even though it sold more than a half a million copies and topped Publishers Weekly’s list. While on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Peterson said “Big things disappear and they disappear when they get crooked and ideologically rigid… that’s what is happening at the New York Times”
This was not an isolated incident as The Economist article highlights. The blatantly editorial and biased list is sadly no longer a reliable place to know what people are reading.
The Times keeps its methodology for curating its bestsellers list secret and The Economist argued that a clear and accurate bestseller list would benefit not only the authors but the public as well.
"A more transparent list would also be more useful. If Alex Jones, a controversial far-right conspiracy theorist, was indeed the second-place bestselling author in America—as Bookscan says he was in August 2022, with a title that was omitted from the New York Times list—people should probably know that. His enduring popularity says a lot about the country and its readers, who are not willing to close the book on him," it concluded.
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