Wall Street Journal will include e-books in their bestseller lists
The move by The Wall Street Journal follows the inclusion of e-books in lists by the New York Times and USA Today.
Children's books as well as self-published works will be eligible for the new e-book category on the Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.
The bestseller lists released by the Wall Street Journal – with information provided by Nielsen BookScan – will now include e-boook sales.
After e-book sales were included in lists released by the New York Times and USA Today, the Journal is jumping on the bandwagon, with the new data set to be included this weekend via four new charts, the Wall Street Journal and Nielsen announced today. The charts’ categories will be: e-book and paper sales for fiction, e-book and paper sales for nonfiction, e-book sales for fiction, and e-book sales for non-fiction.
“As consumers and booksellers continue to embrace the potential of e-books, we are very happy to be working with The Wall Street Journal to produce the most accurate best-seller charts available,” said vice-president and general manager of Nielsen BookScan Jonathan Stolper in a statement reported on by the Associated Press. The company will receive data from booksellers like Amazon, Google, Barnes and Noble, and Apple, and will rank books based on copies sold (although they will not provide the actual numbers.)
The numbers released by Nielsen cover about 75 percent of the sales of hardcover books and paperbacks. This will be the first time e-book sales were included in the data.
Molly Driscoll is a Monitor contributor.