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 inThe Journal of industrial economics Vol. 55; no. 4; pp. 715 - 738
Main Author SORENSEN, ALAN T.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.12.2007
Blackwell Publishers
Subjects
Bestselling books
Book publishing
Direct sales
Impact analysis
Industrial economics
Literary genres
Literature
Product variety
Publishing industry
Romantic literature
Sales
Sales reporting
Studies
United States > US
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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.
Bibliography:istex:0DA84F0DA3325D60E527FCC3504B9A751561F6C4
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I am thankful to the Hoover Institution, where much of this research was conducted, and to Nielsen BookScan for providing the book sales data. The research has benefitted from helpful conversations with Jim King, Phillip Leslie, and Joel Sobel, among many others. Scott Rasmussen provided excellent research assistance. Any errors are mine.
ArticleID:JOIE327
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ISSN:0022-1821
1467-6451
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-6451.2007.00327.x