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Setting sales If a bestseller list shuns authors it dislikes, it should say so Bestseller lists are supposed to reflect sales, not political ideology People love lists. The 1,000 richest people, the 100 places to see before you die, the ten most-wanted fugitives; lists promise to make the chaos of life more manageable. Benjamin Franklin was a superfan, using lists to explain everything from the 13 virtues necessary to be successful to eight reasons to choose an older woman as a lover. Since the first list of bestselling books was published in America in 1895, critiques have piled up like the stacks beside a bibliophile’s bed. In 1932 M. Lincoln Schuster, a co-founder of Simon & Schuster, a publisher, warned that: “The current procedure for compiling…the so-called ‘bestseller’ lists has led to many abuses.” He argued that cumulative sales should count. Currently, only “fastsellers” qualify, leaving the most popular book of all time, the Bible, out of the rankings. More
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