Talk:List of The New York Times number-one books of 2018

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Fake news?[edit]

I just did a google search, I typed in "what is the best selling non fiction book of 2018" and the top result was this page. So I came here. But isn't it fake news? Dr. Prof. Jordan B. Peterson claims to have released the best-selling non-fiction book of 2018: '12 Rules For Life an antidote to chaos', with 2.2 million copies sold so far. I understand that this page doesn't purport to list the Non-Fiction Best Sellers of 2018, but rather the New York Times version of the same, but if the New York Times publishes fake news, well, what? Is Wikipedia just going to signal boost that fake news? Signal boost it right to the top of the Google search results? Sorry, just made an account right now to say this. For a suggestion, I suggest this page be renamed from 'The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers of 2018' to 'Non-Fiction Best Sellers of 2018', and that accurate publication numbers (such as can be found and sourced properly) are published instead. Gam3r mojo (talk) 08:36, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to NPD BookScan, 12 Rules for Life sold 692,238 copies in the year. I noticed that the publisher was listed as Random House Canada. I then stumbled across this article in the Toronto Star by Books Editor Deborah Dundas who investigated this exact topic. As the Toronto Star explains, 12 Rules for Life was indeed published in the United States, where it was a bestseller according to Publishers Weekly, Amazon, The Washington Post and USA Today. The Toronto Star received this first explanation from NYT Books Editor Pamela Paul: "Per the Bestsellers team, we do not include books published in Canada only. Hope that helps!" This was affirmed by the NYT's Chris Harcum, who said "We do not rank books that are not published in the United States". According to the Toronto Star, Random House Canada says it handled US sales of Peterson's book the same way that Vancouver-based publisher Greystone Books handled its US sales of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which appeared on the The New York Times' list. When pressed again on "what, exactly, being published in the United States means" Harcum referred the Toronto Star back to Random House Canada to "explain the differences in their imprints and to ask why they decided not to publish this title in the U.S." As the Toronto Star points out:

"This, it seems, is where the crux lies. Random House Canada is owned by U.S. parent Penguin Random House. None of the New York company's American imprints picked up the book, we’re told, because they didn’t consider it a good fit."

It is well know that how the The New York Times compile their lists is trade secret. Publishers Weekly uses Nielsen BookScan, but the The New York Times compile their own lists from their own numbers. They deemed Peterson's book to have not been published in the United States. For what exact reason, we will likely never know. As Publishers Weekly's Jim Milliot pointed out, The New York Times' reasoning doesn’t make much sense. Οἶδα (talk) 00:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]