Amazon’s new rating system for the book market is seeking to challenge the decades-long dominance of the New York Times bestseller status

For nine decades, the New York Times bestseller lists have been the industry gold standard when it comes to obtaining a seal of approval that will make readers sit up and pay attention. But like most things in the book industry, it’s something Amazon has in its sights.

Last week the online retailer launched Amazon Charts, which complements the site’s usual hourly updates of bestselling books. The new list combines what’s being ordered from them with data obtained from Kindle and Audible users to find out what books are actually being read and listened to.

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It’s an interesting algorithm, and one that has been utilised before, but never formally by Amazon in this way. In 2014, the mathematician Jordan Ellenberg created an index of the most abandoned books, based on Kindle data. So while every man and his dog might have bought a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and Thomas Pinketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, not everyone actually read them.

Amazon Charts might open up a whole new set of bestsellers based on books actually read rather than books bought as coffee-table status symbols. But will this carry more weight with the publishing industry – and readers – than the venerable New York Times bestseller tag, which has been the go-to example of bragging rights since 1931?

On the face of it, Amazon Charts might democratise and re-evaluate the bestseller concept, but on the other – like Coca Cola, KFC and Big Mac special sauce – nobody really knows what actually goes into the New York Times’ bestseller list.

It certainly isn’t just a roundup of physical books bought over the counter at bricks-and-mortar stores. A request for an explanation and a breakdown of audience figures for the various NYT bestseller lists which are posted online was greeted with a firm: “We don’t share traffic data at the section level.”

The New York Times has a reasonably detailed explanation of its methodology online, without actually giving away the actual 11 herbs and spices that give it its market-leading flavour. To summarise: “Rankings reflect unit sales reported on a confidential basis by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles … The panel of reporting retailers is comprehensive and reflects sales in stores of all sizes and demographics across the United States.”

Methods of data collection notwithstanding, can Amazon oust the New York Times for that all-important blurb on a book’s cover that denotes something being so popular that you just can’t afford to not read it? Does the “New York Times bestseller” tag actually help to shift more units anyway?

“I do believe the tag helps sell more books,” says Liz Stein, senior editor with HarperCollins imprint Park Row Books. “There’s prestige associated with being a New York Times bestseller, and industry influencers and booksellers take notice of it. I believe consumers are looking for an affirmation that a book performed well/is popular when making their decision.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amazon Charts are based on real-time orders and what’s being read on Kindle and listened to on Audible Photograph: Hannah Mckay/Reuters

One advantage Amazon has is that it subdivides literary categories almost to an atomic level, which has both pros and cons. On the one hand, it gives a leg up to authors working in a genre that might not have its own New York Times bestseller category, and who might never trouble the upper reaches of the general fiction sales charts.

“In general, I do not think the Amazon bestseller tag will carry as much weight for literary works,” Stein says. “Though for genre books, for which a New York Times tag is not possible due to their evaluation system, it might serve the purpose in the same way – as a validation that this book stood out above the others.”

Two authors who are going all out for an Amazon bestseller tag are Canada-based life coach Mark Desvaux and Mark Stay, who works in publishing in London. They are attempting to write a book that will hit the top of Amazon’s chart listings – in any category – and charting their efforts in a weekly podcast called The Bestseller Experiment in which they interview other authors aiming for the same dream.

Stay reckons Amazon bestseller rankings can allow authors who don’t usually trouble the traditional bestseller lists to come into their own. “We’ve interviewed indie authors who regularly outsell the kind of household-name authors you see on the New York and London Times bestsellers,” he says.

“It feels like this chart signifies that the indie author sector has come of age. When we speak to these authors it’s clear that they take the business side of things very seriously, and are passionate about their craft, and it’s great to see them get some recognition.”

But what means more, the New York Times or Amazon? British author Sarah Pinborough’s psychological thriller Behind Her Eyes hit the New York Times bestseller list when it was published in the US by Flatiron Books earlier this year, with attendant stellar Amazon sales. Does she have a preference for which is going to sell more copies for her?

“I think both are good to be honest,” says Pinborough, diplomatically. “But there is something so fabulous when you get that New York Times bestseller tag on your book that it will take a while before it has the same effect on the ego of the author at the very least.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge to the New York Times’ dominance of the bestseller market is the fact that, according to publishing consultant Rob Eagar, not enough publishers capitalise on it. Writing for Book Business magazine earlier last month, he said that although the status of having a New York Times bestseller remains undiminished, it’s a lost opportunity if customers don’t know about it.

“Today, people make most of their purchasing decisions on smartphones, tablets, and computer screens,” wrote Eagar. “When browsing books online, all they get to see is a small cover image and a few sentences of marketing copy. There isn’t much screen space or much time to connect with a consumer’s limited attention span. If the language and imagery isn’t obvious, people can miss the fact that a book is a bestseller.”

Which, given that latest estimates suggest 69% of all book sales are done online rather than in physical stores, is an omission you can bet Amazon will not make when it comes to shouting about its own bestseller lists.