Melville House Books

The Wall Street Journal — like the Washington Post before it — has decided to scrap its own bestseller list and carry one from Nielsen Bookscan, as a Publishers Weekly report by Lynn Andriani details. (The new WSJ list is here.) BookScan’s senior v-p and general manager Jim King says the alliance will “allow the Journal to bring a greater variety of book charts to their readers, while also providing publishers with a higher level of visibility for their authors.”

The question is, will it be fair and accurate? Nielsen — the same company that compiles “ratings” of television shows — gathers data directly from the cash registers of retailers that have agreed to participate. Exactly what percentage of US bookstores particpate, however, is open to contention. The big chains, it seems, Amazon, and some but not all of the big box stores, like Costco … but that leaves a world of other retailers to account for. Many indie bookstores, for example, seem to be unaccounted for. It doesn’t include the biggest box store of them all (especially lately), Wal-Mart. It doesn’t include library sales. Then there are museum stores, airport shops, newsstands, and all the other places that sometimes sell books, not to mention bulk sales by the publisher to organizations or at non-bookstore events. And then there’s the “extrapolation” that Bookscan admits to, as to stores it doesn’t cover ….

In short, while some say Bookscan covers 70-75% of all booksellers, may people think it’s far less than that, perhaps even as low as 60% or lower.

That accuracy could vary from book to book, too — the literary novel that sells better at indies than at the chains, for example, could conceivably far outsell books on the new Bookscan bestseller list.

Not to damn Bookscan — there is no alternative sales collation system, let alone a better one. Yep, given the nature of returns and all the middlemen in the business, it’s practically impossible to say with surgical precision at any given point in time exactly how many copies of a given title have been sold. So Bookscan is indeed a useful tool.

Still, is it the best way to compile a bestseller list? Is it better than the method others use, such as calling key stores in their region of reportage to scan sales trends? Does the human element in such a process make it better than automated Bookscan?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.