The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the pre-eminent list of best-selling books in the United States.[1][2] It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication. The best-seller list has been ongoing since April 9, 1942.
A Stanford Business School analysis[12] found that the majority of book buyers use the Times‘ list for buying ideas. The study concluded that lesser-known writers get the biggest benefit from being on the list, while perennial best-selling authors such as Danielle Steel or John Grisham see no benefit of additional sales.
The best-seller list may not be a reflection of overall book sales; a book that never makes the list can outsell books on the best-seller list.[13] This is because the best-seller list reflects sales in a given week, not total sales. Thus, one book may sell heavily in a given week, making the list, while another may sell at a slower pace, never making the list, but selling more copies over time.
THIS WEEK | LAST WEEK | COMBINED PRINT & E-BOOK FICTION | WEEKS ON LIST |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | THREAT VECTOR, by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney. (Penguin Group.) As China threatens to invade Taiwan, the covert intelligence expert Jack Ryan Jr. aids his father’s administration — but his agency is no longer secret. | 1 | ||
2 | 7 | GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn. (Crown Publishing.) A woman disappears on the day of her fifth anniversary; is her husband a killer? | 27 | |
3 | 4 | THE FORGOTTEN, by David Baldacci. (Grand Central Publishing.) The military investigator John Puller probes his aunt’s mysterious death in Florida. | 3 | |
4 | 5 | THE RACKETEER, by John Grisham. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing.) An imprisoned ex-lawyer schemes to exchange this information about who murdered a judge for his freedom. | 7 | |
5 | PRIVATE LONDON, by James Patterson and Mark Pearson. (Grand Central Publishing.) The former Royal Military Police sergeant Dan Carter and his ex-wife, Kirsty Webb, look into why young women are being abducted in London. | 1 | ||
6 | 1 | THE BLACK BOX, by Michael Connelly. (Little, Brown & Company.) The Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch links the bullet from a recent crime to the killing of a young female photographer during race riots in 1992. | 2 | |
7 | 3 | NOTORIOUS NINETEEN, by Janet Evanovich. (Random House Publishing.) The New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum tracks a con man who disappeared from a hospital. | 3 | |
8 | 6 | MERRY CHRISTMAS, ALEX CROSS,by James Patterson. (Little, Brown & Company.) Detective Alex Cross confronts both a hostage situation and a terrorist act at Christmas. | 4 | |
9 | 12 | THE EDGE OF NEVER, by J.A. Redmerski. (J.A. Redmerski.) A woman impulsively boards a Greyhound bus to start everything afresh, and meets a man with a dark secret. | 2 | |
10 | 10 | FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, by E. L. James. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing.) A college student falls in love with a tortured man with particular sexual tastes; the first of a trilogy. | 41 | |