Kevin's Watch

Hi everyone!

Many of you may know that I track the fantasy/scifi NYT bestsellers every week on my weblog. Since I've started doing that, I've noticed that a lot of people seem to be interested in keeping an eye on the list.

However, I was wondering if the fact that a novel appears on the list makes it more likely that you will buy/read it? As it is an indication of commercial success and not of quality, I wanted to know if bestsellers lists influence you in your choices?

As for me, the answer is no. But I love to keep track of what's selling well!

Patrick
www.fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com

No, cause it's usually Jordan. No I'm kidding (am I?) I've wished to heck Runes would apprear their, but no...

I don't look at bestsellers lists, so no.

If I do look at them it's only to marvel at what people are buying in large quantities (such as a profesional wrestler's autobiography for instance).

The list can just as often (by that I mean more) be used for me as a tool of what not to buy than the opposite. Particulary in-genre, as authors like Brooks, Jordan, Goodkind, KEVIN J. ANDERSON (?) show up with such frequency, one can't help utt to understand why the genre has a stigma associated with. Our most read books are our most mindless ones in many cases.

To answer your question however, I generally don't care whats selling well, as if I did it would imply that I give any credence to popular opinions on novels, (or anything for that matter), or perhaps imply I think it in anyway is sales (regarding genre novels) is any barometer of quality.

Although I'd love to see some authors get the recogniton they deserve on such a list, but with few exceptions I find it unlikely.

About the only indication that the list has for me is that a book is readily available if I do want to read it (as is sometimes the case, most recently with the Stephen King Dark Tower books).

And some bestsellers deserve the status. Some excellent books I picked up in the past year that were on the best seller list (and also highly recommended via word of mouth from friends) would include Life of Pi, The Secret Life of Bees, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Not all best selling books fall into the poor to mediocre range.

I only care about bestseller lists in relation to SRD, as I'm always rooting for his books to do well. I'll be nice here; let's just say I'm disappointed that Runes of the Earth did not reach higher than it did on the NY Times list. SRD said in his GI that sales are stronger in the UK, so I'm happy about that.

I don't follow the New York Times Best Seller list blind like a lot of people do, they consdier it gospel and thats just a bit stupid to me. I work in a book store part time when I'm not at university and we get a lot of "top 20 believers" as I call them, they will only read books taht are reccomended in the top 20 list of any given newspaper and thats a bit dull to me, cuz you're not really expanding your own sense of variety.

I do look at the list, I have to as I work in a bookstore its only natural to keep up with whats hot and what people are going to be looking for so I know where to point them. Asside from that its good to just see what people are into and what the mainstream crowd is drawn to and how it i nfluences the book industry.

Personally I will listen to what my friends reccomend. There are only 2 people in my life, both of them best friends that I will blindly follow if they reccomend a book as our tastes are well suited and they've never let me down yet.

Asside from authors that I love and their new books which I'll buy based on previous likes. I look for interesting covers and flaps that draw me in, cheers.

No, can't say I put much stock in it myself. Personally, I trust the recommendations from people on here a lot more. Not that the NYT list is automatically a list of crap, but a book being a best-seller doesn't necessarily mean I want to read it.

Admittedly, not everything I've read that was talked about on here has been to my taste, but I've discovered some fantastic new authors as a result, so I'm not complaining.

Murrin wrote:I don't look at bestsellers lists, so no.

Me too. I have never looked at one, ever!

Aside from those of friends, the only recommendations I pay any attention to are those of authors I admire (except for Stephen King; he's a bit, uh, ubiquitous. Does he get paid by the word for recommendations? ).

The trouble with bestseller lists is that they are not lists of the books that sell the best. Every list is edited (read: falsified), either subtly or blatantly.

Consider the NYT list. Whole categories of books are forbidden to appear in it. If a book is published by a house that the Times deems to be a 'religious publisher', it doesn't matter how many copies that book sells: it won't appear. This was done specifically to exclude the Bible from the bestseller lists, but it serves the important secondary purpose of allowing reviewers to pretend that religious belief is the exclusive province of people too stupid to write books. Some reviewers take extravagant advantage of this privilege.

If a book is deemed to be a 'children's book', it won't appear. This saves the New York literary establishment from facing the awful truth, which is that Harry Potter outsells the lions of 'mainstream' American literature; in fact, it outsells all of them combined. As B.R. Myers has so caustically noted, this would force them to recognize that the stuff they like to publish and praise is not what the vast majority of people want to read.

Farseer,

Oh? So the children books list was excluded from the NYT Bestsellers' List for the sole purpose of keeping Harry Potter off the list?

but it serves the important secondary purpose of allowing reviewers to pretend that religious belief is the exclusive province of people too stupid to write books. Some reviewers take extravagant advantage of this privilege.

Care to back this up? Sounds dubious, at best.

Another aspect about best selling lists is the special interest groups who buy in huge bulk certain novels that never get read or not intended to be read, just to make best selling lists - to induce more exposure, and it works.

Let be honest, even military buffs, don't give a damn about what General Frank did in his life - cetainly not enough to make the top 10 best seller list.

One example (and the one that is most obvious) is books about the militray/autobiographies by miltary/goverment officials. The last one I can remember is the biograpy of General Frank, Goverment agencies buy these by large amounts, which his why you always see them high on he list when they come out.

Different political factions do this as well, for the purposes of not getting in a ridiculous political debate we need not mention names (Ann Coultier).

Lord Mhoram wrote:Farseer,

Oh? So the children books list was excluded from the NYT Bestsellers' List for the sole purpose of keeping Harry Potter off the list?

No, the Harry Potter books — despite selling more copies to adults, and read by adults, than any recent book that did make the NYT lists — were ruled to be solely and exclusively children's books so that they could be kept off the list. A large and well-organized readers' campaign to have the books declared eligible for the list had precisely zero effect.

The music business was changed beyond recognition in the early 1990s, when the charts were altered to use actual, confirmed sales figures instead of deliberately skewed surveys. (For one thing, it was discovered that both rap and country were a lot more popular than anyone had previously guessed, and sales of rock were grossly overrated.) The bookselling business, at least where bestseller lists are concerned, hasn't attained that degree of honesty yet, and appears determined not to.

Lord Mhoram wrote:

but it serves the important secondary purpose of allowing reviewers to pretend that religious belief is the exclusive province of people too stupid to write books. Some reviewers take extravagant advantage of this privilege.

Care to back this up? Sounds dubious, at best.

The book-reviewing field, particularly in 'literary' fiction and the SF genre, contains many names noted for their public hostility to organized religion, especially Christianity, and practitioners thereof. I haven't bothered reading any mainstream critics for some years now, as I am not sufficiently interested in the stuff they review to wade through their alternately sneering and sycophantic prose. But in SF, I can offer John Clute and Claude Lalumière as two major names with bees in their bonnet about religion; also Norman Spinrad and some of his cronies who review for Asimov's.

(Spinrad even makes a particular point of not capitalizing 'God' even when using it as a proper name — a fairly common practice in the field, and a nastily prissy way of showing one's disrespect. It doesn't matter in this context that Spinrad thinks of God as a fictitious character. Humbert Humbert is a fictitious character, and one I despise as a character; but I do not deprive him of his capital Hs.)

Ainulindale wrote:Different political factions do this as well, for the purposes of not gettin ga ridiculous political debate we need not mention names (Ann Coultier).

As long as I can respond by not mentioning Michael Moore, I'm happy to leave the matter undebated.

(Except to suggest that both those blowhards be locked in a small, airtight room together, until they either kill each other or use up all the oxygen.)

Variol Farseer wrote:

Ainulindale wrote:Different political factions do this as well, for the purposes of not gettin ga ridiculous political debate we need not mention names (Ann Coultier).

As long as I can respond by not mentioning Michael Moore, I'm happy to leave the matter undebated.

(Except to suggest that both those blowhards be locked in a small, airtight room together, until they either kill each other or use up all the oxygen.)

Sounds good. Let's lock 'em up!!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It's always interesting to see what people think of this sort of thing!

On a different note, I've just added an index to the blog. This way, people who have not been following it from the beginning can now find their way to the different articles and book reviews! Let me know what you think!

Patrick
www.fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com

It would be nice if something I wrote ended up on the list. Perhaps the Kevin's Watch Anthology will appear one day.
I have to assume that every writer would like the recognition of making the list and I have to assume that in general people are in fact influenced by a book's position. How can anyone not be tempted to read a book that sits atop the NYTBSL?

Bah, I'm too busy writing my next story to be bothered with petty statistics. Maybe my story will get on the New York Times Bestseller list!!

What's the New York Times Bestseller List?

Seriously though, I've never paid attention to the list.