The New York Times Best Seller list Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==History== {{external media | float = right | width = 210px | image1 = ''New York Times'' Best-seller List<br>{{center|1=[https://archive.org/details/nytimesbestsellerlist-oct121931 Oct. 12, 1931]}}The first best-seller list was published with little fanfare for books sold in New York City only. }} Although the first [[best seller]] list in America was published in 1895, in ''[[The Bookman (New York)|The Bookman]]'', a best seller list was not published in ''The New York Times'' until October 12, 1931, 36 years later, with little fanfare.<ref>''The New York Times'', October 12, 1931. 19</ref><ref name=miller>{{cite book |editor=Ezra Greenspan|title=[[Book History (journal)|Book History]] |volume=3 |chapter=The Best-Seller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction |author=Laura J. Miller |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PEZkkbohbtoC&pg=PA290 |publisher=[[Penn State Press]] |year=2000 |pages=286β304 |isbn=0271020504}}</ref> It listed five fiction and four nonfiction books for [[New York City]] only.<ref name=miller/> The next month, the list was expanded to eight cities, each with its own list.<ref name=miller/> By the early 1940s, fourteen city-lists were included. A national list was created on April 9, 1942, in the Sunday ''New York Times Book Review'' as a supplement to the Monday edition regular city lists.<ref name=miller/> The national list was ranked according to how many times the book appeared in the city lists.<ref name=miller/> Eventually the city lists were eliminated, leaving only the national ranking list, which was compiled according to "reports from leading booksellers in 22 cities".<ref name=miller/> Ranking by bookseller sales figures continues today, although the process has remained proprietary.<ref name=diamond/> By the 1950s, ''The Times''{{'}}s list had become the leading best-seller list for book professionals to monitor, along with that of ''[[Publishers Weekly]]''.<ref name=miller/> In the 1960s and 1970s, shopping-mall chain bookstores [[B. Dalton]], [[Crown Books]], and [[Waldenbooks]] came to the forefront with a business model of selling newly published best-sellers with mass-market appeal. They used the best-selling status of titles to market the books and not just as a measure of sales, thus placing increased emphasis on the ''New York Times'' list for book readers and book sellers.<ref name=miller/> As shown in the graph below, the number of titles achieving the number one spot has grown consistently over the years, ranging from fewer than 10 in the 1970s to the high thirties in the past decade. This graph represents fiction titles only. Years with smaller numbers means one or more titles dominated as major best sellers, notably ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'' in [[List of The New York Times number-one books of 2003|2003]] and [[List of The New York Times number-one books of 2004|2004]], ''[[Fifty Shades of Grey]]'' in [[List of The New York Times number-one books of 2012|2012]] and ''[[Where the Crawdads Sing]]'' in [[List of The New York Times number-one books of 2019|2019]].<ref>Hawes Publications, [http://www.hawes.com/number1s.htm ''New York Times'' Adult Hardcover Best Seller Number Ones Listing Fiction By Date]</ref> {| | {{legend|#F46D43|'''NYT Number 1 Fiction Titles per Year''' (1970β2022)}} |- |valign=top width=0%| {{Graph:Chart |width= 600 |height= |colors=#F46D43 |type = rect |linewidth = 1 |xAxisAngle=90 |x= 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1990, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 |yAxisTitle=Unique titles at No. 1 | yAxisMin = 0 | yAxisMax = |y1= 3,6,4,7,4,6,4,5,7,10,8,6,9,6,9,13,11,11,8,10,12,11,12,7,11,12,14,10,14,13,15,22,24,17,16,25,24,22,36,37,33,27,22,36,39,25,37,37,39,25,34,38,24 |y1Title=Year }} |} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page