Figure 4

Making the NYTBL. The distribution of the number of copies sold in a week needed to be featured in NYTBL for (A) fiction and (B) nonfiction. (C) The number of copies bestselling books have sold in a single week in mid August (week number 33) that got them to the list over different years. (D) Explanation of the box plot technique used in (C). The median number of copies the bestselling books sold to hit the NYTBL during different weeks throughout a year, for (E) fiction and (F) nonfiction. In general, books need to sell between 1000 and 100,000 copies in a single week to hit the NYTBL, a range that has been fairly stable over the years. Fiction book sales are higher in summer and all sale numbers are significantly elevated from December to early January. Fiction sells more than nonfiction throughout the year but the gap is smallest in early January