NYTBR Adds New Bestseller List

Fellow mediabistro.com blog FishbowlNY discusses the upcoming changes to the NYT paperback bestseller lists, positioning the splintering of the fiction category into separate lists for mass market and trade paperbacks, beginning with this weekend’s issue, as a “revamp” of the entire section, then going on to suggest that the shift “vindicates Michael Wolff, who has been critical for some time about the relevance of the Book Review.” I don’t know about that, although I do buy the rationale cited in Crain’s New York, which basically suggests that the trade paperback category will create a bestseller list filled with books that might actually have been covered by the Review, as opposed to the “mass market titles which are sold in huge quantities at big box retailers.” Taking a look at next Sunday’s mass market fiction list, for example, I can’t recall any mention of those twenty books in the Review (although I might be missing a blip in a Marilyn Stasio column or two).

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