They’ve finally gotten around to it. Unbelievable that it has taken this long. Here’s what the Times has to say:
In an acknowledgment of the growing sales and influence of digital publishing, The New York Times said on Wednesday that it would publish e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction beginning early next year.
The lists will be compiled from weekly data from publishers, chain bookstores, independent booksellers and online retailers, among other sources. …
Janet Elder, the editor of news surveys and election analysis for The Times, said the newspaper had spent two years creating a system that tracks and verifies e-book sales.
“We’ve had our eye on e-book sales since e-books began,” Ms. Elder said. “It was clear that e-books were taking a greater and greater share of total sales, and we wanted to be able to tell our readers which titles were selling and how they fit together with print sales.”
I wanted to write ‘better late than never’, but I don’t really think it matters anymore. I haven’t checked the Times’ best seller list in some years and in about ten minutes can glean eBook title sales stats myself from the top ten publishing sites.
I must note that this eleventh-hour move smacks of arrogant condescension, verses being merely ‘fashionably’ late.
I am not ‘annoyed’ at the NYT for the ‘delay’. Ebooks are not yet even 10% of total book sales, and in my opinion ebooks didn’t warrant a separate best-seller list until about now.
In any event, the most interesting question is what if any difference will there be between the existing best seller lists and the new ebook list. Of course, if the publisher doesn’t release an ebook version, then it won’t be on the ebook list.
I also wonder if the NYT will capture direct sales by publishers. Baen Books sells directly, for example, and if the NYT only tracks Amazon, Sony, and a few other ‘big’ retailers it would effectively shut Baen out of the ebook best seller list.
I suspect they will ignore the erotica and smaller indie publishers of course despite the high volume of ebook sales they produce. Can’t imagine them asking samhain or ellora’s cave for stats since that would go against their snobbiness level. The NYT is so outdated and grows less and less relevant to us every year.