If there’s one thing you guys come to PEDESTRIAN.TV for, it’s weird controversies in the world of young adult fiction and the New York Times bestseller list. To that end, read this.
YA fiction fans were a little skeptical when the novel Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem exploded onto no. 1 of the NYT’s Young Adult Hardcover bestseller list – a book that basically nobody had ever heard of and was only covered on a couple of blogs. Author Phil Stamper pointed out the odd entry on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/stampepk/status/900705245642313728
It exposes a pretty fascinating world wherein book publishers will resort to all kinds of underhanded tactics and subterfuge to artificially inflate their sales numbers and therefore muscle their way onto the NYT Bestseller list. An appearance on the list is worth its weight in gold.
Review site Pajiba has compiled an exceptionally in-depth investigation into the Handbook for Mortals controversy which is far more gripping than it has any right to be.
Buying your way onto the bestseller list is not technically illegal, nor is it that hard if you know how. Many conservative publishers have found success through bulk-buying books then giving them away as, say, subscriber gifts if you sign up to Newsmax or the like. The thing is, usually the New York Times make note of this and include this as a footnote of sorts to the list. Here, there’s nothing. Pulling this kind of trick is hard to conceal, but here it’s especially glaring.
How does a book with such a low Amazon ranking that’s ‘temporarily out of stock’ suddenly become the most read book in YA? How does something that has next to no organic blogging coverage or even Twitter buzz do this? If the only Twitter gossip for your book is variations of ‘Seriously, has anyone heard of this book?’ you’ve got problems.
As the mystery deepened, Stamper received DMs from people on Twitter who worked at bookstores, who claimed that they received calls from people who asked whether they were a “NYT reporting store” – i.e. a store that sends its sales data to the Times so they can collate their bestseller list.
Well this clears things up… (they asked for their name to be redacted) pic.twitter.com/WkzUynUwsB
— Phil Stamper (@stampepk) August 24, 2017
The going theory at Pajiba – which is a pretty compelling one – is that it’s part of a scheme to sell the film rights to the book. A book that tops the NYT bestseller list is on much better legs when it comes to fooling film executives that it’ll get bums on seats.
Highly encourage you to read the full deep dive over at Pajiba. For the record, the NYT have corrected the record, putting critically acclaimed YA novel Hate U Give by Angie Thomas back at no #1. Lovely.
