Replacing the Now Defunct USA Today Bestseller List As a RA Resource

Readers of this blog and those who hire me to present know that I have been mourning the loss of my favorite bestseller list, the USA Today Bestseller list, which was discontinued on December 1, 2022. I loved this list because it gathered the top 150 books that sold in a given week without worrying about what category said book fell into, who published them, and for what age. Literally just the 150 best selling titles. It was an easy way to understand, at one click, what the most popular books were in the country at any snapshot in time.

I wrote about how I was trying to replace and replicate the same information back in February here. That post also talks about why bestseller lists are a great resource on their own. Click through for more on that topic.

But today, I have great news. I think I found another replacement for what the USA Today list did-- the only problem, it is only adult titles. I loved that USA Today considered children's as well. But still..

It is the Book Riot weekly Monday post, "The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists." From the introduction to this weekly series:

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to look at the books everyone has been buying lately! This is a simple question with a strangely complicated answers, because every bestseller list uses its own cryptic system of data points and criteria. That’s where we come in: we’ve looked at the four biggest bestseller lists and noted the overlap to get an overview of the biggest books of the moment.

To get these numbers, we look at the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; Publishers Weekly; and Indie Bestsellers, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover. New additions to the list this week are bolded.

As I mentioned in this post back in February, we need to follow multiple lists in order to get the combined data The USA Today had provide for us in one published list: 

...you have to be even more aware because the landscape is fractured. You can use the NYT lists, PW Lists, Amazon lists, Bookshop.org, any and all. But it is hard to follow so many. I am settling on the PW lists as my default because they use BookScan data. 

But now, Book Riot is doing the adult version of what USA Today did for us. (I still recommend checking the the PW list of Top Ten Overall which includes all age levels in one list.)

But the weekly Monday post from Book Riot is a great way to get the adult info in one place. It is a way for you to see weekly, what is actually selling the most copies, and prepare for requests both with extra copies and to make "while you wait lists."

As you look at these lists week to week, make sure you are paying attention to more than just the individual titles and where they fall. Look for trends, assess which books are backlist, meaning they are probably in the media or being promoted on social media. What types of books keep showing up? Also make sure to notice how diverse (or not- because they are not) the lists are. [I also talked about this in February and gave you suggestions on how to diversify the "bestseller" lists as you present it for your patrons.]

The closer we get to seeing an actual "these are the most selling books in America right now" list, the better we can serve our patrons.

Here is the direct link to this week's post.

And here is the link to pull up all of the weekly posts in reverse chronological order.

Again, it is not as perfect as the USA Today list was. Here's hoping they reinstate that onet some day, but until they do, Book Riot is giving us a useful replacement.