The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to NYT, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon

One of the interesting things about the book industry is that you can never get a straight answer on just how many copies a book has sold. Amazon keeps its information to itself, and they control a large part of the market. Different lists are based on their own sources and criteria. No single bestseller list is completely accurate. But what if we combined the lists? Would that paint a clearer picture?

I’ve taken four of the most well-known bestseller lists — the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; USA Today; Publishers Weekly; and Amazon — and noted the overlap between them. I’ve only included books that showed up on multiple lists. Each of these has their own criteria (for example, the Amazon list updates hourly), but I hope that the combination gives some worthwhile information.