BESTSELLER LISTS AND PRODUCT VARIETY

This paper uses detailed weekly data on sales of hardcover fiction books to evaluate the impact of the New York Times bestseller list on sales and product variety. In order to circumvent the obvious problem of simultaneity of sales and bestseller status, the analysis exploits time lags and accidenta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of industrial economics 2007-12, Vol.55 (4), p.715-738
Main Author: SORENSEN, ALAN T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bestselling books
Book publishing
Direct sales
Impact analysis
Industrial economics
Literary genres
Literature
Product variety
Publishing industry
Romantic literature
Sales
Sales reporting
Studies
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Summary:This paper uses detailed weekly data on sales of hardcover fiction books to evaluate the impact of the New York Times bestseller list on sales and product variety. In order to circumvent the obvious problem of simultaneity of sales and bestseller status, the analysis exploits time lags and accidental omissions in the construction of the list. The empirical results indicate that appearing on the list leads to a modest increase in sales for the average book, and that the effect is more dramatic for bestsellers by debut authors. The paper discusses how the additional concentration of demand on top-selling books could lead to a reduction in the privately optimal number of books to publish. However, the data suggest the opposite is true: the market expansion effect of bestseller lists appears to dominate any business stealing from non-bestselling titles.
ISSN:0022-1821
1467-6451
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-6451.2007.00327.x