Bestsellers Aren't

As I've mentioned before I have a book-shuffling job and on sundays we do the switchover for the week's bestsellers. We use the New York Times bestseller list (published approximately two weeks in advance so at least with bestsellers I can easily look into the future) which is more or less the industry standard within the United States though other lists do exist. In an empirical world the list would be done completely by volume of sales. In fact, by the very nature of the name you would be under the impression that Best Sellers are determined by volume of sales (literally which ones sold the best). Unfortunately if you were under that impression it would be a mistaken impression. The New York Times list is based on survey samples from independent and chain retailers in the United States as well as wholesalers and other factors which are trade secrets. I'll let you think about that for a moment before I start dissecting it.

It's not the trade secrets part that bothers me too much because in the over sixty year history there has been ample data that if they used the "trade secret" bit to influence the list to their own advantage it would have become obvious by now to people who can do math. There are two things about their methodology in deciding that make me cringe. One thing is the fact that they count sales from wholesalers as part of their formula. You know when you were a little kid and "double counting" was one of those unfair tricks you accused other kids of? That's what they're doing when they count not retailer but also wholesaler sales. Because where do the retailers get their books? Obviously from the wholesalers. The other thing is the word "sample". And here is where I can draw on my movie theater background. When I worked in the movie theater every single night we got a call from not one but two companies (Rentrak and Neilson EDI) that tracked box office numbers and the theater that I worked at was an independent one-screen in a tourist town seating less than two hundred per showing and usually having fewer than ten showings in a week. Rentrak and Neilson weren't taking a "sample". Our little one-screen was not part of their "sample"- they called us because they called every theater. Now that I work at a bookstore I know we don't get a call at the end of the night asking what books we sold during the day and I work at a chain that's been around longer than Borders. So who belongs to the sample? I have no idea.

Although, if I did know which stores belonged to the "sample" and I did have a book being published and also some money I could manipulate my book into being on the bestseller list. It's been done before by some economists who obviously are capable of math and clearly viewed it as a good investment. It's been done even more times with the Amazon top one hundred list but that's another story entirely. It also turns out to not be illegal in any way though the New York Times does frown upon that sort of behavior. But only when it's an individual doing it and not a large corporation. Why do I say that? It turns out that the top ten largest publishing companies in the United States are responsible for 98% of all New York Times bestsellers. The top five largest are responsible for 80% of them. If you were standing in front of a shelf of bestsellers right now and glanced at their spines you'd probably be inclined to disagree with me vehemently. You might say: "I can see Scribner, Bantam, Atria, Tor, Knopf, DelRey, Amy Einhorn, Ballantine, Beyond Words, Simon & Schuster, HarperOne, Little Brown, Razorbill, Hyperion, Harper, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, St. Martin's Griffin, Back Bay Books, Broadway Books, Reagan Arthur Books, and that's only twenty from this week that this blogger happened to remember off the top of their head from doing bestsellers on sunday!" Well, you'd say the first part but the last part was really only to illustrate my point. All those publishers are for books on the bestseller list this week and there are twenty different ones. If you looked at all the books you'd probably find twice that many or even more. So how could just ten companies have a lockout on 98% of bestsellers? Well, if you can name which of those twenty isn't actually one of the top ten in the next five seconds before I tell you I'll give you a prize. Because when I see that list I see Simon & Schuster, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Random House, Random House, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, HarperCollins, Workman, Macmillan, Hachette, Random House, Hachette and that right there is the top six largest publishing companies in the United States plus Workman (and if you guessed Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill you won a prize).

And those companies are the reason that bestsellers aren't. Say you work for Bantam, an imprint of Random House, and you receive this amazing manuscript from me and everyone who reads it loves it so you know it will make your company money. When you print that book you're going to want to print a lot of that book because you think it will sell well. When wholesalers buy that book you convince them to buy a lot of them because you think it will sell well and the wholesalers do buy a lot of them. The wholesalers then convince the retailers that it will be worth their while to buy a lot of them. To further this cause the publishing company likely has a contract with many retailers across the country to display certain books in a prominent position and even if those books never sell the retailer still gets money for putting them on a special display. More than likely, though, those books will sell because they're in a highly visible position and the public has been trained to buy books from these special displays because it's an easy way of finding "high quality" books without doing much looking. Then, because the publishers printed a lot of them and convinced both wholesalers and retailers to buy a lot of them and get the retailers to put them in a prominent position so they sell well they make it to the bestseller list. Once on the bestseller list not only are they in an even higher visibility spot for customers but they're now bestsellers and the consumers believe that lots of other people are buying this book and use that as a reason to buy it, thus prolonging it's stay on the bestseller list. Long story short, publishing companies basically expect something to become a bestseller so it does. A self-causing self-fulfilling prophecy.

Omnivore's Dilemma (or "I like to be pretentious and read Bestsellers")

      I thought of a third title: "In which I try to convince you to agree with my taste in books." Which, by the way, I am not trying to do at all so it wouldn't be a terribly accurate title. The second option isn't very accurate, either. Cheryl just likes to say that I'm trying to be pretentious when I read bestsellers and such. In fact, I read this for two reasons and two reasons only. Neither of which involve pretention or the fact that this fits in with my usual genre. My usual genre, just for reference, is science fiction and fantasy.
      The first reason I read this was because my friend had read it for one of his classes at Stanford (and yes, I do mean that Stanford) and recommended it to me, saying that I would enjoy it. I can't remember what I said to him at the time, possibly something non-committal because I didn't really read non-fiction much at all. I don't even watch the news. That probably would have been the end of it in all liklihood but the title stuck with me. Omnivore's Dilemma. And then the second thing happened. I figured that if I was going to break the rules of the store at which I work and read at the counter when I'd finished my other work I should read something intellectual and it just so happened that that day we'd gotten in a new copy of the Omnivore's Dilemma. And that's why I read it.
      At least. That's why I started to read it. I continued to read it because I was hooked from the very first page. Just like a good fantasy novel that I picked up and couldn't put down this book grabbed me almost from the moment I opened it and though I've long since finished reading it still hasn't let me go.
      Why should you read it, though? You want to know the answer to that question. And I'll answer, like many of the teachers you probably found annoying in school, with a question. Why do you eat? Do you eat because you have to? Is food just a fuel for your body? Do you eat because you enjoy it? Do you hate eating but do it anyway? Do you eat to comfort yourself? Whatever reason you have for eating you still have to do it and since you have to you should at least think about what it is you're putting into your body and where it comes from.
      Omnivore's Dilemma follows the course of not one but four unique meals back to their various sources. The book explores the golden sea of corn lurking in so many processed foods under mysterious names like maltodextrin and in things you wouldn't imagine contained corn at all. Like your steak dinner that was most likely raised on a giant Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation eating a diet of corn. He also talks about all of that organic food you see in supermarkets and what about your diet you should actually change if you want to reduce your carbon footprint.
      I could talk on and on about the subjects that the book covers. I could tell you how it made me feel and how it opened my eyes. I don't really want to do that. I just want to get you across the two biggest hurdles preventing you from reading this book. It's long. It's non-fiction. It looks like it's going to be hard to read. It's also not even out in massmarket print yet so it's expensive. In the store it's going to run you about sixteen dollars for a (as my father would call it) "big paperback" or that I have learned they are called in the industry "trade sized paperback". You can get it for less than six dollars used online. And it is definitely worth it no matter how much (or little) you pay for it.
      I will agree that it is long and it is non-fiction. It does contain some large words but none any longer than the ones on the back of your cereal box or the chicken nuggets you have in your freezer. The author also writes as though he's talking to you. The style is very easy to read and all the long words are typically explained immediately. For a book about food it has a surprising amount of action and the subject matter is so interesting and near and dear to all of us that you wont want to stop reading.
      So why not read it? It's interesting. It's pretty easy to read. It's a subject you are probably endlessly fascinated by if it comes in culinary form. You'll learn something. And you can go to Amazon right now and spend six dollars to get it. I even provided you with a link above so you have no excuses.