New York Times bestseller list is biased against conservatives: study
The New York Times bestseller list is less likely to include works published by conservative authors even if their books posted sales figures that matched those of left-leaning writers, according to a study.
An analysis conducted by the Economist magazine found that books published by conservative printing houses are 7% less likely to make it onto the Gray Lady’s weekly bestseller list even if those books sell at the same rate as works put out by other publishers.
While leading conservative authors such as Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are frequently listed on the Times’ bestseller non-fiction list, less prominent writers have a more difficult time making the cut, according to the Economist.
The magazine found that among book titles that sell fewer than 5,000 copies per week, those from conservative authors are much less likely to crack the Times’ bestseller list.
Those books that make the bottom 10 of the top 25 slots on Publishers Weekly’s bestselling non-fiction list in any given week are 22% less likely to be listed in a similar slot on the Times’ bestseller list, the Economist found.
The analysis also found that conservative authors who do manage to get their work touted on the Times’ bestseller list for non-fiction rank on average 2.3 notches below other authors with similar sales figures.
Books that are not bestsellers have it worse, according to the Economist. A book that ranks in the bottom five of Publishers Weekly rankings will on average place five spots lower on the Times’ list, the analysis concluded.
Michael Knowles, a conservative commentator, is author of the 2021 book “Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.”
In its first week, it sold 17,587 copies — good for first place on Publishers Weekly’s list. The book recorded robust sales in the weeks that followed.
Nonetheless, it failed to crack the Times’ bestseller list.
“The New York Times has a view of an acceptable kind of conservative,” Knowles told the Economist.
Ari Fleischer, who was White House press secretary during the George W. Bush administration, is author of the 2022 book “Suppression, Deception, Snobbery and Bias.”
The book reached as high as No. 6 on Publishers Weekly’s list of bestselling non-fiction works in the summer of 2022.
But the book was nowhere to be found on the Times’ list.
“It’s bang-your-head-against-the-wall frustrating,” Fleischer told the Economist.
Earlier this year, author Rob Henderson’s book “Troubled” about the hypocrisy of America’s elite was omitted from the Times’ bestseller list despite the fact that its sales outperformed those that were ranked as high as fourth and fifth that week, according to Circana Bookscan, which tracks 85% of print book sales in the US.
Others books that sold well but which were conspicuously absent from the Times’ bestseller list include “A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America” by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and “American Playbook: A Guide to Winning Back the Country from the Democrats” by commentator Clay Travis.
For authors, the prestige that comes with being included on the Times bestseller list often translates into more sales, higher speaking fees and better deals in future contracts with publishers.
But the Times has never revealed its methodology for how it ranks bestselling books.
In March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk blasted the Times for its “pure propaganda” after Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer of Coinbase and former general partner of venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, wrote on X that the bestseller list was “fake.”
Srinivasan, who is also the author of “The Network State,” reacted to a decades-old lawsuit filed by “The Exorcist” author William Peter Blatty against the newspaper for allegedly ignoring his book’s robust sales figures.
“They were forced to admit in court that it is not a ranked list. It’s actually ‘editorial content’ and they can exclude books they don’t like,” Srinivasan wrote.
In his post, Srinivasan provided a link to “Kill Zone,” a blog devoted to top thriller and mystery writers, which recounted the story of Blatty’s lawsuit.
A Times spokesperson told the Economist: “The political views of authors or their publishers have absolutely no bearing on our rankings and are not a factor in how books are ranked on the lists.”
The spokesperson added that “there are a number of organizations with bestseller lists, each with different methodologies, so it is normal to see different rankings on each.”
The Post has sought comment from the Times.
