In early 2011 the New York Times which is well known for their hard cover and paper back best sellers list, will move into the ebook realm.
The New York Times will cover both Fiction and Non-Fiction ebooks, and their list will be evident in both the printed and online editions. Their selection for ebooks will be overseen by thrid party company named RoalityShare.
If you have never heard of their company before, RoalityShare is the leading provider of global digital revenue management and reporting solutions for the music and book publishing industries. Utilizing an innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application delivery model, RoyaltyShare provides a suite of on-demand services dedicated to simplifying the increasingly complex digital sales channel. RoyaltyShare’s technology is used by hundreds of companies around the world.
“The vibrant growth of digital publishing has created a need for an impartial, reliable source for tracking and reporting the top-selling eBooks across the country,” said Janet Elder, editor of News Surveys for The New York Times. “The Times is a trusted brand within the book publishing industry and with consumers. As with all The Times’s rankings, these additional lists will benefit from corroborative sourcing and we will watch for trends in the industry.”
“The best-seller list is an essential part of the Book Review, and we’re excited we’ll be able to give readers newer and more complete information,” said Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review.
The New York time best seller list for ebooks, is a tremendous step forward, legitimizing ebooks into the mainstream. E-Readers have taken North America by storm in the last 14 months, before that they were a fringe gadget. Finding an e-reader in a retail store warranted bare bones selection, and only if you were aware of them did you manage to buy one online. Yet in the last 14 months, Bestbuy, Staples, Walmart, and major bookstores all have a wide array of e-readers to choose from, and they are coming down in price.
The New York times, a very respected publication in terms of their Bestseller lists, is a positive step forward for a company to give reader suggestions and assemble the authors you need to know about. To date, no major company has filled the void in ebook reading lists, other then ourselves. It will be refreshing to not have Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or Kobo dictate to you which of their authors ebooks you should buy.
As always, Good e-Reader previews the essential reading list in terms of ebooks, check out our November eBook Previews.
via New York Times Press Release
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.