The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists

It’s an open secret that The New York Times bestseller list is editorialized, not just a reflection of sales figures. And there have been plenty of NYT bestseller list scandals, including authors who have attempted to buy their way onto the list. (You might even argue that the bestseller list is broken.) This week’s NYT nonfiction bestseller list is a good example of how much it differs from every other popular bestseller list: while Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Amazon, and Indie Bestsellers all agree the #1 nonfiction bestseller this week is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, that title doesn’t show up in The New York Times’ top 15. Instead, they list the #1 nonfiction bestseller this week as 2015’s The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, which is nowhere near the top of any of the other bestseller lists. It’s a puzzling ranking that confirms how little we know about what puts a book on that list.

The bestsellers continue to have a lack of diversity on many levels, including being disproportionately by white authors. Some Indie Bestsellers you should know about are Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.