Global Best Sellers list?

January 23, 2006 7:38 AM

I there such a thing as a global best-sellers list? Every country has a very detailed best-sellers list, generally on a weekly basis, but is there a real global list, or at least a compedium of all lists from the world? Do I have any way to know, for example, if Ian McEwan's Saturday was a best-seller in Brazil or in Greece?
posted by dov to Society & Culture (5 answers total)

As books are released at different times in different countries, there's not much use for a global best sellers list, just the same situation with movies. You'd never get a representative perspective on the situation.

As for separate national bestseller lists, I'm sure there are such things for most countries, but I can't help with any specific resources.
posted by jcruden at 8:32 AM on January 23, 2006

Actually box office results are tracked worldwide in addition to just domestic results.

But in terms of book sales. No clue.
posted by FlamingBore at 9:29 AM on January 23, 2006

Also keep in mind that, unlike box office returns, "Best Seller" lists are essentially marketing ploys that have no real relation to the popularity of a book. That's why just about any book can be a "best seller".
The way it works is that publishers report the number of books that they sell to booksellers - not the number of books that the bookseller actually sells. So all that needs to happen is for Barnes and Noble and Borders to place a ginourmous order for a book, which happens for most of the big popular folks. Then, where "best sellers" becomes a misnomer is that the numbers are *not* adjusted for actual sales, so if B&N ends up returning 3/4 of the books to the publisher because no one actually bought it ... well, by then, it's already been declared a "best seller", so who really cares, right?
posted by robhuddles at 2:12 PM on January 23, 2006

First some clarifiaction on domestic best-sellers: American best sellers really are the best selling books of that week. Publishers don't make best seller lists, bookstores do and they do so from point of sale to the customer. B&N, Amazon, and Bookscan all report based on books sold to customers, not quantities shipped to distributors. The problem is that not every book sale is accounted for because of the different venues that sell books. The big chains have their reporting systems, the independents have their reporting systems, Wal-Mart and other non-bookstores report based on UPCs and not ISBNs which has been the industry standard and that really messes things up since they also tend to report when they want. It's too many data streams coming in at different times to correctly create a universal best-seller list. there's also certain categories that are ghettoized- sci-fi, romance, tech books, mysteries. The shops that sell these tend not to report the sales to anyone, nor do they have a POS system.

Before I can answer your question Dov, I guess I'm wondering if you're asking if the English language edition of Ian McEwan's Saturday (for example) was a best-seller in Brazil or Greece or whether the translation of the book was a best-seller. The main problem with a global best-seller is that each edition of a book is put out by a specific publisher in each country and the editions can come out years apart. Sure, the English language edition of Saturday may have been a best-seller globally one week in March, but it may take 9 months for it to come out in Greece where it might become a best-seller months after US and UK sales have dropped. I think some of the UK lists may take in to account the sales they've had on the continent and there some development in a World Spanish list, but that about all I know of how to find out what's selling throughout the world.
posted by rodz at 5:28 PM on January 23, 2006

The Economist regularly features (quarterly?) an article with global Amazon (and some bookseller) bestsellers. Tend to be larger, more first-world countries generally, but they might have others online? (You need a subscription to access a lot of the online content. You might find you can access via a library subscription.)
posted by johngumbo at 9:28 PM on January 23, 2006