Replace Bestsellers Lists

[New Limacon]

While I'm starting to grow weary of journalists writing woebegone, self-pitying, lengthy, space-taking-up stories in their newspapers wondering why, of all things, people are reading fewer newspapers, I did have to have sympathy for critics after reading this. ( The Washington Post makes you create account. If you want to read it, I recommend going to a site like bugmenot.com or mailinator.com and creating a fake one. Or you can just read my handy-dandy excerpt.)

The critics spoke last Friday. "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a Hindenberg of a movie.
This Story

The audience responded: So freakin' what? They forked over $215 million (and counting) to see the widely panned sequel about shape-shifting robots. It became only the second movie after last year's "The Dark Knight" to make that much in its first five days. "Transformers 2" was director Michael Bay's worst-reviewed movie -- worse than 2001's "Pearl Harbor."
[...]

Not that it matters, though. For decades, summer blockbusters have vacuumed up people's money in spite of how bad the reviews are.

"Critics don't affect the box office," says Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo. "The bottom line is it's about the premise of the movies and how they're marketed. 'Transformers' is assembled in a way to appeal to as many people as possible. It has all the scenes and plot devices -- well, not plot, actually -- that worked in the past."

I don't know about movies, but when it comes to books I think a big culprit in allowing marketing to overtake talent is the bestseller list. As soon as a book becomes popular enough to reach the list, it becomes even more popular, guaranteeing more weeks on the list, which makes it even more popular...you get the idea, it's a positive feedback loop.
Here's an idea for a more useful list: list books not by popularity, but by how reviewers score it. It would be more complicated than just selling numbers, and still fairly crude (how do you come up with a numerical value for a review?) Perhaps the list could be a mix of popularity and critical acclaim; the newspaper printing it could find the fifty most popular books in the area and then ask several large paper critics to list their top ten, in order.
I apologize if this post is bloggy. (I did include a news article, that should prove I'm not just admiring my virtual reflection.) What do NSGers think? Would this work? Would it help good books become more popular, and prevent the lists themselves from becoming free advertising? Does anyone even read books anymore? Will New Limacon run out of question marks? Is that even possible? It's not possible, is it? Is it.

[Rejistania]

I think that people who buy their books based on how many others do DESERVE to be disappointed. OTOH, critics are irrelevant as well. I once read what critics said about my favorite book at that time. I thought this operson read a completely different book and used a lot of BS and pretentious language to hide that fact. I started looking at critics after enjoying certain books/films and the pattern repeated.

[Barringtonia]

On a tangent, I just watched the Transformers sequel and I came away with two thoughts...

1. Why did I watch it, I actually quite enjoyed the first where there was so much action that even though I could hardly catch up to the plot, for what it was, and couldn't often know who was good and who was bad in any fight scene, the experience, in terms of a mind-rush was pretty good. This one failed on that count, way too much 'plot'. To be honest, the characters are secondary to the awesome sight of huge, shiny metallic bashing in 360 vision and etc.,

So, the first point is that movies can be false advertising to some extent, I have no real way of viewing the product before I purchase, I simply regret after the fact - that's reasonably unlike most other purchases other than entertainment though I can generally hear music, know how a team plays or etc., and expect some consistency. Not so with films.

2. Did anyone notice the rather snarky sub-play over President Obama - in these sorts of films it's generally a generic president but in this one it was specifically Barack Obama with the entire allusion to 'you don't negotiate with evil' in terms of some speech about the cowardice of thinking one might pursue diplomacy and normalising relations as opposed to getting the biggest guns you can find and blasting the enemy sky-high without pausing to question anything.

Otherwise, in terms of the OP, I don't mind bestseller lists in terms of easily seeing what I should avoid, unless I've heard something to the contrary.

[New Limacon]

I think that people who buy their books based on how many others do DESERVE to be disappointed. OTOH, critics are irrelevant as well. I once read what critics said about my favorite book at that time. I thought this operson read a completely different book and used a lot of BS and pretentious language to hide that fact. I started looking at critics after enjoying certain books/films and the pattern repeated.

What book was that?

[Rejistania]

I think that people who buy their books based on how many others do DESERVE to be disappointed. OTOH, critics are irrelevant as well. I once read what critics said about my favorite book at that time. I thought this operson read a completely different book and used a lot of BS and pretentious language to hide that fact. I started looking at critics after enjoying certain books/films and the pattern repeated.

What book was that?

Accelerando by Charles Stross

[Ashmoria]

I don't know about movies, but when it comes to books I think a big culprit in allowing marketing to overtake talent is the bestseller list. As soon as a book becomes popular enough to reach the list, it becomes even more popular, guaranteeing more weeks on the list, which makes it even more popular...you get the idea, it's a positive feedback loop.
Here's an idea for a more useful list: list books not by popularity, but by how reviewers score it. It would be more complicated than just selling numbers, and still fairly crude (how do you come up with a numerical value for a review?) Perhaps the list could be a mix of popularity and critical acclaim; the newspaper printing it could find the fifty most popular books in the area and then ask several large paper critics to list their top ten, in order.
I apologize if this post is bloggy. (I did include a news article, that should prove I'm not just admiring my virtual reflection.) What do NSGers think? Would this work? Would it help good books become more popular, and prevent the lists themselves from becoming free advertising? Does anyone even read books anymore? Will New Limacon run out of question marks? Is that even possible? It's not possible, is it? Is it.

best seller lists are marketing vehicles for the book industry. sure they are stupid popularity contests that mean no more than the ratings of movies by ticket sales. (i mean really is transformers2 a better movie because so many people wanted to see a summer action movie? nope. neither is 2 years on the best seller list a statement of how good "the davinci code" is as a book). but they generate more book sales and the book industry needs all the help it can get.

i do like your idea of a some kind of a compilation list of new(ish) books by critic's ratings. it would be more of a service for readers. (book critics are pompous asses who overrate books that are essentially unreadable but a thoughtful user of the list could take that into consideration). a "rotten tomatoes" for books, eh?

[Jello Biafra]

I don't know that the critics' opinions are any better than the marketers'. Critics seem to be looking for something different (in a book or a movie) than the average reader or viewer.

[Yootopia]

Aye here's your problem - people who get paid to write about How Good Things Are often like or, more likely, pretend to like pretentious shit which the public 'doesn't get' to prove they need paying.

Critics didn't like Terminator 2 - a quite good film, and certainly an easy watch. Critics largely liked No Country For Old Men, which is a Cormac McCarthy book at heart and thus over-under-written. It made a film which was equally boring.

[Rejistania]

Aye here's your problem - people who get paid to write about How Good Things Are often like or, more likely, pretend to like pretentious shit which the public 'doesn't get' to prove they need paying.

I never got THAT....

[Mad hatters in jeans]

Aye here's your problem - people who get paid to write about How Good Things Are often like or, more likely, pretend to like pretentious shit which the public 'doesn't get' to prove they need paying.

Critics didn't like Terminator 2 - a quite good film, and certainly an easy watch. Critics largely liked No Country For Old Men, which is a Cormac McCarthy book at heart and thus over-under-written. It made a film which was equally boring.

I liked no country for old men as a film, i enjoyed watching it a nice break from 'gun-splatter-robot-death-machine-doom-gore-fest', films.

[DrunkenDove]

"I think they reviewed the wrong movie," Bay told the Los Angeles Times. Critics "just don't understand the movie and its audience. It's silly fun. I am convinced that they are born with the anti-fun gene."

I think I agree with Michael Bay. I feel dirty.

[South Lorenya]

Unfortunately, some compasnies insist on hiring SHFGs as their reviewers. :(

[New Limacon]

I don't know that the critics' opinions are any better than the marketers'. Critics seem to be looking for something different (in a book or a movie) than the average reader or viewer.

I don't know. I agree with others that critics can be blowhards, to show they are indeed artistes. But in terms of what they think is good or bad, they seem more right than not, and if the list took into account the lists of fifty critics, the individual quirks would (hopefully) be canceled out.

[New Limacon]

Aye here's your problem - people who get paid to write about How Good Things Are often like or, more likely, pretend to like pretentious shit which the public 'doesn't get' to prove they need paying.

Critics didn't like Terminator 2 - a quite good film, and certainly an easy watch. Critics largely liked No Country For Old Men, which is a Cormac McCarthy book at heart and thus over-under-written. It made a film which was equally boring.

You're the second person in as many days I've heard Cormac McCarthy. Apparently he has a large anti-cult following which I never knew about.

[Bottle]

I'd be content if they simply expressed sales in terms of advertising budget.

Because goddam, they were aggressive as all hell when it came to selling Transformers 2. OF COURSE it was a bigger hit than movies which saw 1/100th of that kind of advertising. Duh. Same happens with books. So it's a self-fulfilling prophesy; the studio or publisher or whatever decides they want a certain book or movie to be the Next Big Thing, so they go all out in marketing it, so it becomes the Next Big Thing.

[The_pantless_hero]

To be honest, the characters are secondary to the awesome sight of huge, shiny metallic bashing in 360 vision and etc.,

Everyone is saying that and Michael Bay literally doesn't care. Seriously. Apparently Megan Fox bitched about it and Michael Bay effectively called her a naive little girl - "She doesn't know what she's talking about, but it's alright, she's only 23. She has alot left to learn."

[The_pantless_hero]

I think I agree with Michael Bay. I feel dirty.

Michael Bay is the likable Uwe Boll.

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

Conduct surveys for each week, of all the movies, books, songs, et cetera that are selling in bookstores or theaters or online. Then make "top 10" or "top 20" lists.

Those "top 10" or "top 20" lists should be generated completely at random, and no individual item should repeat more than once in five weeks.

[Bottle]

"I think they reviewed the wrong movie," Bay told the Los Angeles Times. Critics "just don't understand the movie and its audience. It's silly fun. I am convinced that they are born with the anti-fun gene."

I think I agree with Michael Bay. I feel dirty.

Ugh, why?

Transformers was a terrible movie. It wasn't fun. It wasn't done well. The fight scenes were horrible, choppy, poorly-edited (it switched between high noon and dusk from SHOT TO SHOT in one scene), and impossible to follow. The pacing of the movie was abysmal, swapping between seizure-inducing speed and dragging, dull, plodding intervals. The characters were boring. Even the jokes fell flat most of time, and seriously I wish the guy sitting behind me in the theater had written the script because HE was coming up with better puns and jokes during the movie. There were so many missed opportunities for coolness.

I went to Transformers LOOKING for silly fun. I was looking for a movie on the level of the cartoons I watched as a kid, nothing more, and that's a damn low standard! Instead, I was bored and disappointed. It was just a badly made movie, and it only made so much money because they pushed it like crack and cashed in on the fact that most of my generation would go see it for precisely the same reasons I went to see it.

[New Limacon]

I'd be content if they simply expressed sales in terms of advertising budget.

Because goddam, they were aggressive as all hell when it came to selling Transformers 2. OF COURSE it was a bigger hit than movies which saw 1/100th of that kind of advertising. Duh. Same happens with books. So it's a self-fulfilling prophesy; the studio or publisher or whatever decides they want a certain book or movie to be the Next Big Thing, so they go all out in marketing it, so it becomes the Next Big Thing.

At the very least, it's bad capitalism. Producers aren't supposed to create supply and demand. (That's for an elite body of literary intellectuals. )

[Steam Steam East]

I agree with the OP, bestseller lists are nothing short of popularity contests. They're just as bad as reality shows and American Idol which value popularity over talent. Just because something hits number one on a bestseller list doesn't mean its good or the author has any talent. Take a look at Twilight for example. It makes it harder for lesser known authors with actual talent to reach new and wider audiences.

What they should be doing is basing how good a book is by creating something like an IMDB for books for regular consumers, not pretentious critics who are paid to hate and like certain things. Why should I base my opinions and entertainment value for a movie based on what some guy I don't even know thinks about it? Yes, there are some movies that deserve to be and are universally despised, but for other movies such as Transformers I'll see for myself to see if its as bad as everyone says. It's better than having these critics and their followers force feed their opinion on me.

People generally see movies because they want to be entertained, not because other people tell them to see what movies they think are good/bad.

[Intangelon]

Ugh, why?

Transformers was a terrible movie. It wasn't fun. It wasn't done well. The fight scenes were horrible, choppy, poorly-edited (it switched between high noon and dusk from SHOT TO SHOT in one scene), and impossible to follow. The pacing of the movie was abysmal, swapping between seizure-inducing speed and dragging, dull, plodding intervals. The characters were boring. Even the jokes fell flat most of time, and seriously I wish the guy sitting behind me in the theater had written the script because HE was coming up with better puns and jokes during the movie. There were so many missed opportunities for coolness.

I went to Transformers LOOKING for silly fun. I was looking for a movie on the level of the cartoons I watched as a kid, nothing more, and that's a damn low standard! Instead, I was bored and disappointed. It was just a badly made movie, and it only made so much money because they pushed it like crack and cashed in on the fact that most of my generation would go see it for precisely the same reasons I went to see it.

COMPLETELY agreed. I fear the same fate for the upcoming G.I.Joe, though I was old enough to realize those 'toons were selling stuff.

[New Limacon]

What they should be doing is basing how good a book is by creating something like an IMDB for books for regular consumers, not pretentious critics who are paid to hate and like certain things. Why should I base my opinions and entertainment value for a movie based on what some guy I don't even know thinks about it? Yes, there are some movies that deserve to be and are universally despised, but for other movies such as Transformers I'll see for myself to see if its as bad as everyone says. It's better than having these critics and their followers force feed their opinion on me.

The only problem I see with that is the books people rate will probably me the most popular. I'm sure plenty of people who read The Da Vinci Code didn't like it, but the number of people who did far outnumbers those who read a less popular book that everyone who read it enjoyed.
You could rate books by average rating, but that would have the opposite problem. My self-published memoirs that only my parents and I have ever bought would get a higher rating than a book 999 people loved and one person hated.

[Greed and Death]

But with out Best seller list how will I know what books to Avoid ?

[Ifreann]

But with out Best seller list how will I know what books to Avoid ?

If the author's name is bigger than the name of the book on the cover, don't read it.