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Amazon Charts is a Weekly Best-Seller List

Move over, NYTimes. It’s time to close up shop, USA Today.

Amazon has launched a best-seller list called Amazon Charts.

The retailer has distilled its genre and category best-seller lists into a quartet of lists of the top-selling and most-read books (fiction and non-fiction get different lists).

The lists reflect the activities of Amazon customers across all types of books: print, digital, and audio. Each entry will include a buy button (and a "read now" button) so consumers can find out more.

The list will be posted every Wednesday, and will be based on the previous week’s activities.

From the press release:

Key Amazon Charts features include:

  • What’s really being read: Amazon Charts Top 20 Most Read is the first list to rank books by the average number of daily Kindle readers and daily Audible listeners each week – giving customers the opportunity to see what’s actively being read or listened to every week.
  • What’s really being bought or borrowed: Amazon Charts Top 20 Most Sold ranks books according to the number of copies sold and pre-ordered through Amazon.com, Audible.com and Amazon Books stores and books borrowed from Amazon’s subscription programs such as Kindle Unlimited, Audible.com, and Prime Reading.
  • The stories behind the books: When exploring Amazon Charts, readers can browse fun insights into how other readers are reacting to each book. From which books were Most Anticipated according to the rate of customer pre-orders, to which Kindle books were simply Unputdownable, according to how quickly customers read a book from cover to cover.

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Comments


DaveMich May 18, 2017 um 12:31 pm

One very interesting thing about this on first look is that every book is listed with both it’s publisher AND it’s agent (yes, agent) prominently shown.

Will Entrekin May 18, 2017 um 9:24 pm

My guess is the reason for that is the myriad recent stories of production companies picking up properties based on book sales. If I’m a producer considering a hot new property, boom, I’ve got the contact info of exactly whom to contact to ask about optioning.

MKS May 18, 2017 um 9:42 pm

Is this a service Amazon is offering that tradpub does not offer?

Will Entrekin May 19, 2017 um 9:56 am

I think it usually requires a lot more digging. It’s been years since I considered looking for an agent, but I remember the advice given to authors used to be find a book like yours, open it up, and check the acknowledgements to see if the author thanked their agent, then look them up.


DaveMich May 18, 2017 um 12:32 pm

Another is that of the top 20 most READ books, 5 of them are Harry Potter books.


MKS May 18, 2017 um 2:18 pm

Which means that books *without* agents will be readily identified.


Frank May 18, 2017 um 3:13 pm

These four lists are interesting.

There is still room for NY Times and USA Today to publish their book lists since they use other sources of information.

Darryl May 18, 2017 um 8:44 pm

But unless they clean up their act they are going to start looking increasingly ridiculous and their credibility is going to suffer further. Any manipulation will stand out.


Bob Luedtke May 18, 2017 um 8:56 pm

That’s why the Amazon lists will be called irrelevant by the Trad Pub group.


Hannah Steenbock May 19, 2017 um 3:44 am

I love it.

It’ll help understand the market much better than underreported print sales. Including publisher and agent is brilliant, as it’ll bring those into the boat (everyone loves seeing their names on such lists!). And I love the distinction between "most read" and "most sold" – very important.

This will most definitely be at least a balancing view compared to those rigged old-fashioned bestseller lists.


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