Harry Potter Will Never Make The New York Times Bestseller List

[matcom]

<snip>

Wanna make some easy money? Tell your friends you don't think Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will debut at #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List. Heck, you don't think it will even make the Top Ten! Then give them ten to one odds.

Huh? The book that will probably set a single day and one week sales record, the book hundreds of thousands will line up for at midnight won't be the Number One book on The New York Times Bestseller list? That's right because Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a children's book and those books don't count.

It happened in 2000. The Harry Potter books -- a once in a lifetime publishing phenomenon -- were dominating the bestseller lists, with three titles ensconced in the Top 15 at the same time. It just wasn't fair, moaned publishers of more "serious" fiction. It kept more deserving titles off the list, titles that people would never hear about, said bookstore owners. And so in a rash, indefensible decision, the New York Times decided to banish children's books solely to their own separate list.

Imagine if the people behind the Nielsen Top 10 TV show listings decided that reality shows were "taking away" valuable attention from dramas and sitcoms. Let reality shows get their own list and the official Top 10 only include "genuine" TV shows, like CSI and House and Grey's Anatomy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/why-harry-potter_b_57099.html