According to publishing sources, Limbaugh’s probe into the accuracy of the bible sold 9,660 in its first week out, according to Nielsen BookScan. That should have made it no. 4 on the NYT print hardcover sales list.
Well, there's the problem right there, Paul Bedard's whiny rant starts off with the flawed premise that the NYT Best Seller List is somehow supposed to be the same as the Nielsen BookScan Best Seller List. They are not now nor have they ever been the same. They each use different methodologies surveyed from different booksellers to compile their lists. Limbaugh's book doesn't even crack the Top 20 on Amazon's Best Selling Books list (raw sales numbers, updated hourly), or the Best Selling Books of 2014 (updated daily). It does manage to place 13th on Amazon's Hot New Releases List, though (updated hourly). And, it places at #11 on the prestigious Amazon Most Wished For list (updated hourly). If fails to make the Movers and Shakers List (sales over the past 24 hours) at all, however.
It cracked the Top 50, at #50, of the USA Today Best Selling Book List.
So, like the allegation levied here by you of the NYT, which one of Amazon's lists is less than fully honest? What about USA Today's list?
Incidentally, according to Nielsen BookScan (and Publisher's Weekly), who has it listed at #8, not #4, Limbaugh's book sold 9660 in its first week, but only 69 copies in its second week. Sales seems to be dropping off a little bit.
I do find it interesting that Bedard states that the NYT has,
“banished conservative legal author David Limbaugh’s latest, Jesus on Trial, from its upcoming best seller list despite having sales better than 17 other books on the list,” despite the fact that Limbaugh's book is listed at #16 on the NYT Combined E-Book and Print Non-Fiction Best Seller List, which is a far better indication of book sales than is the Hardcover-Only List. It would appear that the term "banished" might be, at the very least, a little less-than honest.
I guess there's fully honest, and then there's fully honest.
