暢銷書排行榜真正告訴我們的是一本書的受歡迎程度

暢銷書排行榜真正告訴我們的是一本書的受歡迎程度

For anyone involved in writing or publishing books, the New York Times bestseller list is the holy grail.

對于任何從事寫作或出版書籍的人來說，《紐約時報》暢銷書排行榜是他們的圣杯。

"I still remember the very first time that I got on the list," says Dominique Raccah. She's the founder of Sourcebooks, a publishing house based just outside Chicago. "For an indie press in the middle of the Midwest, yeah, it was absolutely the most extraordinary moment in my life."

多米尼克·拉卡說:“我仍然記得我第一次登上這個名單的情景。她是芝加哥郊外的Sourcebooks出版社的創(chuàng)始人。“作為一名生活在中西部的獨立媒體人，這絕對是我生命中最不尋常的時刻。”

The publishing industry has had a good year when it comes to books about recent politics: James Comey, Michael Wolff and Jim Mattis have all spent weeks on the treasured Times lists.

出版行業(yè)今年在政治類書籍方面表現(xiàn)不錯:詹姆斯·科米、邁克爾·沃爾夫和吉姆·馬蒂斯都曾連續(xù)幾周出現(xiàn)在《紐約時報》的珍貴人物名單上。

Nobody quite knows what goes into making a New York Times bestseller. The paper doesn't reveal its methodology, other than to say in part that it's based on a "detailed analysis of book sales from a wide range of retailers." So I asked the people who are in the best position to make educated guesses about a book's sales, and who watch the lists closely: publishers.

沒人知道怎樣才能成為《紐約時報》的暢銷書。這篇論文沒有透露它的方法，只是部分地說它是基于“廣泛的零售商對圖書銷售的詳細分析”。因此，我詢問了那些最有可能對一本書的銷量做出有根據(jù)猜測的人，以及密切關注這份名單的人:出版商。

"You expect that if it's rung up at a cash register, it's reported to The New York Times and it's reported to the publisher, all of those things align equivalently," says Dominique Raccah. "That's not how we get the data."

多米尼克•拉卡表示:“你會以為，如果有人在收銀臺給你打電話，它會報告給《紐約時報》，然后再報告給出版商，所有這些事情都是同等重要的。”“這不是我們得到數(shù)據(jù)的方法。”

That's because nowhere in the world is there a straight up list of how many copies every book has sold. It just doesn't exist.

這是因為世界上沒有可以直接列出每本書的銷量地方。它根本不存在。

And yes, publishers ship books to Amazon, Target and Barnes & Noble, and get sales figures back. But some books go through middlemen, distributors who sell to many independent bookstores, and not all of them report their sales. Dennis Johnson, co-founder of Melville House, says he only really knows for sure what he sends out.

沒錯，出版商會把書寄給亞馬遜、塔吉特和巴諾，然后拿回銷售數(shù)據(jù)。但有些書要經(jīng)過中間商，經(jīng)銷商把書賣給許多獨立的書店，而不是所有的書店都報告銷量。梅爾維爾之家的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人丹尼斯·約翰遜說，他真的只知道自己送出了多少。

"I can look at each account in the country that has taken a book directly from our warehouse. And so I know how many books are out there, but that is not a sales reporting service, really. It's an ordering service."

“我可以查看該國直接從我們的倉庫取書的每個賬戶。所以我知道有多少本書，但這不是銷售報告服務，真的。這是一種訂購服務。”

And then there are books that get sold to third parties — for example, "if you do a book on health care, and there is some kind of health care organization or hospital that wants to buy that book for its employees," Johnson adds, "that has a healthy business efficiency to it." That's because the publisher is selling directly to the hospital.

然后還有賣給第三方的書—例如，“如果你寫了一本關于醫(yī)療保健的書，有某種醫(yī)療保健組織或醫(yī)院想要為其員工購買這本書，”約翰遜補充道，“這會帶來健康的商業(yè)效率。”那是因為出版商直接賣給醫(yī)院。

This happens all the time — an organization thinks a book would be good for its employees to read, so it makes a bulk order from the publisher. Since the sale didn't go through a store, it wouldn't get reported to the bestseller lists. But here's where we need to make a distinction: If someone had instead bought the books from a bulk buying arm of a big bookstore, that would get reported. And if the book does make the bestseller list, that bulk order would be noted as part of its sales.

這種情況經(jīng)常發(fā)生——一個組織認為一本書適合它的員工閱讀，所以它會從出版商那里大量訂購。由于銷售不是通過商店進行的，所以它不會出現(xiàn)在暢銷書排行榜上。但這里我們需要做出區(qū)分: 如果有人從一家大書店的批量采購部門購買了這些書，那就會被報道。如果這本書確實上了暢銷書排行榜，那么批量訂購將被記為銷售的一部分。

But every publisher I talked to told me the same thing Dennis Johnson did: "It looks like he might have made that list anyway."

但與我交談過的所有出版商都告訴我丹尼斯•約翰遜做過的一件事:“看起來他無論如何都可能會進入那個名單。”

This practice makes some publishers uncomfortable. "You care about the bestsellers list because you believe it to be an indication of what Americans are reading. The problem with this particular kind of system is that it's actually inflating numbers in such a way as to not be representative of what Americans are actually reading."

這種做法讓某些出版商感到不舒服。“你關心暢銷書排行榜，因為你認為它反映了美國人的閱讀習慣。這種特殊體系的問題在于，它實際上是在以一種不能代表美國人實際閱讀內容的方式夸大數(shù)字。”

Of course, once a book is sold, it's anyone's guess as to whether Americans are actually reading it ... or just letting it collect dust on the shelf.

當然，一旦一本書賣出去，所有人都在猜測美國人是否真的在讀這本書……或者只是讓它在架子上積灰塵。