Down to You and The Wild Ones by Michelle Leighton (self-published, romance)

How they hit the list: Leighton, who goes by M. Leighton and has self-published fifteen books, says she’s not sure how Down to You and The Wild Ones hit the New York Times bestseller lists. She did a promotional event at book review blog A Tale of Many Reviews for two weeks following each book’s release.

Leighton just signed a deal with Penguin imprint Berkley for The Wild Ones. “They’ll be taking over the ebook soon and then we’ll be working together on the next two books out, once I get them written,” she said. “I’m so, so excited to be taking this journey with them.” Her agent is Kim Whalen at Trident.

New York Times bestseller list, week of 11/4/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 10/25/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

In the Footsteps of Little Crow by Curt Brown (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

It’s the oldest story in Minnesota, Curt Brown says: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. The U.S. Government hanged 38 Dakota Warriors and it remains the largest mass execution in United States history. For years it was “swept under the rug,” Brown says. But 2012 marks the war’s 150th anniversary, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune assigned Brown to write a long series about the conflict.

Brown received a four-month break from his regular reporting duties and traveled through the United States and Canada to meet with Dakota descendants. He read historical documents and diaries and consulted unofficial weather records and newspaper accounts to tell the story of the war through the eyes of Dakota chief Little Crow, the leader of the rebellion.

The result was a six-part narrative series, complete with infographics, photos and video. The first part of the series ran in the Star Tribune and on its website on August 12, with another part each day for the next five days. The paper also packaged all six parts together into a $2.99 ebook that went on sale August 12, for readers who couldn’t wait to read the whole thing.

Apparently, a lot of people couldn’t wait: The book is #13 on the New York Times nonfiction ebook bestseller list this week. It’s featured in the Apple iBookstore, where it is #8 on the history bestseller list.

I asked the project’s editor, Kate Parry, why she thinks it has been so successful. “We worked very hard to put the Dakota and white settler versions of history on equal footing,” she says. “Because it is set in the same era as the Civil War, we may be picking up readers who read whatever they can find about that era. But the bottom line is that Curt wrote the series magnificently, with a lot of intrigue and tension woven through the story line. We’re hearing from readers on every platform that it was a great read and they couldn’t wait to get to the next chapter or installment. That’s just what we were hoping for when we structured it as a narrative.”

“The response has been overwhelming,” Brown says. “[The Star Tribune] was in bankruptcy a couple years ago. I got calls and emails from people saying, ‘This restores my faith in newspapers.’ People are impressed that a newspaper can let a reporter have four months to do something special and tell them about their history.”

In the Footsteps of Little Crow is $2.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook

New York Times bestseller list, week of 9/2/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 8/23/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

Photo courtesy of Star Tribune / David Joles

This isn’t a completely accurate picture of the market, because a low-priced ebook that sells many copies is still not necessarily driving as much revenue as a higher-priced book a couple of spots lower down the list. In a new weekly bestseller list that launches today, book publishing website and community Digital Book World aims for a more accurate methodology by taking price into consideration.

“It is incredibly important for the fast emerging ebook marketplace to have clear, valid and authenticated data about both the dollar volume and unit volume of best sellers,” said David Nussbaum, chairman and CEO of Digital Book World’s parent company, publisher F+W Media. “Because it is still a very young business, the entire channel — authors, agents, publishers, and consumers — need clear and focused information about best sellers.”

The data for the list is provided by Dan Lubart of Iobyte Solutions, an IT strategy firm that has been examining the effects of price on ebook sales for awhile. Lubart was hired as HarperCollins’ SVP of sales analytics in December 2011, but his work with DBW is separate. Book publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company, Writers House president Simon Lipskar, Book Industry Study Group executive director Len Vlahos, and Bowker Market Research VP Kelly Gallagher also consulted on the list.

The list weights data from Kindle, Nook, Google, Kobo and Sony. Retailers are weighted based on market share and the books are organized into separate price categories. (More on methodology here.) ”As a combined list of all the retailers, it gives as unbiased a view as possible as to what people are really buying. By taking a weekly view, this list will smooth out the one-day sales spikes from the daily deals and reveal the true best-sellers,” said Lubart.

Here’s this week’s top-25 overall list (links for the price-banded categories are on the same page). DBW notes that big-six publishers and high price points dominate the list. “Scholastic, with its popular Hunger Games series, and Soho Press, a New York-based independent publisher, were the only two publishers outside of the six largest in the U.S. to break the top 25 on the list,” Digital Book World editor Jeremy Greenfield notes.

The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis (Soho Press)

What it’s about: Danish nurse Nina Borg discovers a three-year-old boy in a suitcase, naked and drugged and alive. As she treks across Denmark to find out where he came from and how to get him back, her life is in danger. It’s #25 on the New York Times ebook bestseller list this week.

How it hit the list: Soho Press, a NYC-based independent publisher that focuses on literary fiction and international crime, is selling the ebook edition of The Boy in the Suitcase for $1.99 this August. Soho Press first published the English-language edition in fall 2011. The paperback edition comes out in September, and the next book in the Nina Borg series, Invisible Murder, will be published in October.

When Soho Press put The Boy in the Suitcase ebook on sale — in concert with an advertising campaign across crime blogs –”presales of the digital edition of Invisible Murder jumped way up,” says Paul Oliver, Soho’s director of marketing and publicity. “The promotional tools in this case are working in a very consistent way. Ebook readers are going on to purchase the follow-up.”

The book is included in Amazon’s August “100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or Less” promotion.

The Boy in the Suitcase on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

New York Times bestseller list, week of 8/26/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 8/16/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

Playing for Keeps and Perfection by R.L. Mathewson (self-published)

Romance author R.L. Mathewson has written eight paranormal and contemporary romance novels. This week, the first two books in her “Neighbors from Hell” series are on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.

What the books are about: In both romances, the main characters discover that their neighbors aren’t so bad after all.

How the books hit the lists: Frequent readers of this column know that Amazon promotions often lead directly to ebooks becoming bestsellers, but in this case R.L. Mathewson received a boost from a different source: Apple. As digital self-publishing platform and e-bookstore Smashwords notes, Mathewson is being featured as a “breakout author” in the iBookstore’s romance section, with “promotional bricks” for her books elsewhere in the iBookstore. Playing for Keeps is #10 on Apple’s ebook bestseller list. The books is also climbing the Kindle charts, with Playing for Keeps at #123 and Perfection at #126.

What’s next: Mathewson is releasing a third book in the “Neighbors from Hell” series this fall and simultaneously launching a charity campaign for wounded soldiers, “Checkmate for Charity.”

All of Mathewson’s books are $0.99 now, but she’ll be raising her prices to $2.99 over the next couple of weeks. “I held the cost down at a dollar for as long as I could, but once things took off I started to get swamped with more responsibility,” she tells me. “I had to hire a full time PA and a part time PA to run my charity program, help with Facebook, emails, proof reading, etc. It was a hard decision and one that I discussed with some of my readers at my Facebook page. Some people suggested that $2.99 was still too low, but I’d like to keep the books as affordable as possible. For those that cannot afford the price hike we will be doing what we can on an individual basic based upon need.”

Playing for Keeps on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

Perfection on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google | Kobo | Sony

New York Times bestseller list, week of 8/12/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 8/2/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

The Sullivans series by Bella Andre (self-published)

Romance author Bella Andre has self-published nine books and traditionally published eight. The self-published books have all been bestsellers at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Kobo. Overall, Andre has sold 915,000 self-published ebooks, and she expects sales of 160,000 in July alone.

What it’s about: Andre’s “Sullivans” series is about a close-knit family of eight siblings who, one by one, find their true loves. The first book in the series, The Look of Love, was published in June 2011; Andre has since published four more.

This week, three “Sullivans” books are on the New York Times bestseller list at #22, #23 and #24, and three titles are on the USA Today bestseller list at #28, #51 and #56.

How the books hit the lists: Andre worked with Amazon on a “Gold Box Deal,” which ran on July 21 and priced each of the five books in the series at $1.99. (The books are normally priced between $4.99 and $5.99.)

What’s next: Andre will release the sixth book in the Sullivans series, Let Me Be the One, this fall. The “Sullivans” books will be published in Brazil and France, through traditional publishers, soon and there are more foreign deals in the works.

In addition, she says, “I would very much like to see my Sullivan books with wide print distribution in North America and have high hopes that the right situation for that will present itself soon.”

The Look of Love: The Sullivans, Book 1 on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

A Sweethaven Summer by Courtney Walsh (Guideposts)

Before Walsh got into fiction, she wrote two scrapbooking idea books, Scrapbooking Your Faith and The Busy Scrapper, both published by F&W. She also recently published a scrapbooking ebook, Step Up Your Supplies.

What it’s about: A Sweethaven Summer centers around a group of women who are brought back together thanks to an old scrapbook and secrets inside. The book is #19 on the NYT bestseller list this week and #36 on the USA Today list.

How the book hit the lists: Inspirational publisher Guideposts released A Sweethaven Summer in February 2012 and is now running a promotion with Kindle and Nook selling the ebook for $0.99. The second book in the series, A Sweethaven Homecoming, will be published on August 1.

A Sweethaven Summer on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google | Kobo | Sony

New York Times bestseller list, week of 8/5/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 7/26/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty (Penguin/Riverhead)

What it’s about: Silent movie star Louise Brooks, at age 15, is accompanied by 36-year-old Cora Carlisle from Wichita to New York. The trip changes both of them. This week the book is #12 on the New York Times  ebook bestseller list and #21 on the USA Today list, with digital copies outselling print.

How the book hit the NYT list: The Chaperone, published on June 5, hit the NYT hardcover extended list earlier this summer and was chosen as USA Today‘s #1 hot fiction pick. But the ebook is seeing renewed success now because it was chosen as the Kindle Daily Deal on July 8 and was sold for $2.99. It’s now back to its digital list price, $12.99.

The Chaperone on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

And don’t miss…

• Scholastic’s fourth-quarter earnings rose, due in large part to the success of Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games. Scholastic announced that the trilogy has sold over 50 million print and digital copies in the U.S.; the bestselling book of the three is still The Hunger Games, with over 23 million copies sold.
• Last week I featured Colleen Hoover’s self-published YA romance Slammed. It’s still on the NYT ebook bestseller list at #13 (and the USA Today list at #22), and now its sequel, Point of Retreat, is on the NYT ebook list too, at #19.
  

New York Times bestseller list, week of 7/29/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 7/21/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

Slammed by Colleen Hoover

Hoover’s first book, Slammed, is self-published and hits the NYT ebook fiction bestseller list this week at #13. The young adult romance tells the story of an 18-year-old girl, Layken, whose family has to move across the country after her father’s death. When Layken meets her new neighbor, Will, romance and challenges ensue.

Hoover tells me, “I hadn’t written anything in the past ten years until December [2011], when I got the idea for Slammed.” The book took a month to write and she uploaded it to Amazon on January 1, 2012 “to get it out there for friends and family. I never intended to make money off of it or for it to even turn into anything.”

How the book hit the NYT list: Hoover says, “Every single day of this whole experience has been a huge shocker.” At first, she spread the word about the book on message boards and Facebook. In March, popular romance book blogger Maryse reviewed Slammed (here’s her review) and the book took off.

What’s next: Hoover has released a Slammed sequel, Point of Retreat, on February 24. She’s working on a standalone novel, Fall Together, and a version of Slammed written from Will’s point of view.

Slammed is $2.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Smashwords

And don’t miss…

• The 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, which started out as self-published Twilight fan fiction and was bought by Random House’s Vintage in a seven-figure deal in March, is set to hit 20 million copies sold in the United States this week, with sales roughly split between print and digital formats. The Wall Street Journal reports that 31 million copies of the trilogy have been sold in English-language markets around the world.
• Note Carole Radziwill’s What Remains (Simon & Schuster/Scribner) at #35 on the NYT ebook nonfiction bestseller list. The book, Radziwill’s memoir, was first published in 2005. It’s hit the ebook list this week because Radziwill appears on the current season of Bravo reality show “Real Housewives of New York.” Brian Belfiglio, director of publicity at Scribner, says the ebook’s fast sales “simply reflect the format’s immediate accessibility, even as we went back to press to satisfy increased demand for the paperback edition at retail.”

New York Times bestseller list, week of 7/22/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 7/12/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Here’s a good way for a book to become a New York Times bestseller: Have Jeff Bezos mention it on Amazon’s homepage. That’s what happened to self-published author Jessica Park, whose YA novel Flat-Out Love got a shout-out from Bezos on June 18. This week, it hits the NYT ebook bestseller list for the first time at #25.

Park co-writes the “Gourmet Girl” mystery series with her mom, Susan Conant. That series is traditionally published by Penguin. But Park self-published her first YA novel, Relatively Famous, as well as some e-singles. She tried to sell Flat-Out Love to a traditional publisher “because I had it in my head that I needed that big-time validation,” but when it didn’t work she self-published instead.

Flat-Out Love is $3.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Apple  iBookstore | Smashwords | Kobo | Sony | Diesel

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Another self-pubbed book, Jamie McGuire‘s Beautiful Disaster, is #9 on the NYT ebook list this week and #24 on the USA Today list. Beautiful Disaster, a romance about college students Abby Abernathy and Travis Maddox, is McGuire’s fourth self-published book. It’s told from the point of view of Abby, but now McGuire is working on a version from Travis’s point of view. The Oklahoma mom is also expecting her third child in the fall, so after that she’ll take some time off and then start working on another book, Red Hill, about a mother’s survival of the zombie apocalypse. “It’s going to be fun, I love zombies, and I can’t wait to write it,” she says.

Beautiful Disaster is $2.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Kobo

And don’t miss…

• Sylvia Day’s Bared to You, the first book in an erotic self-published trilogy snapped up by Penguin in May, hits the NYT print paperback list this week at #4. It’s #6 on the ebook list.
• Dean Koontz has written a series of e-singles to build excitement for his upcoming Odd Apocalypse, to be released by Random House on July 31. The first teaser single, “Odd Interlude #1,” was released June 11 and is #15 on the NYT ebook list this week. The second, “Odd Interlude #2,” was released June 18 and is #11 on the NYT ebook list and #27 on the USA Today list. “Odd Interlude #3″ was released on June 25.
• Tracey Garvis-Graves, whose self-published romance “On the Island” was featured in this column in April, is the subject of a Wall Street Journal article this week. Penguin bought On the Island this month in a seven-figure, two-book deal; a paperback edition is due July 10. In the interlude, On the Island dropped off the NYT bestseller list this week.

New York Times bestseller list, week of 7/8/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 6/28/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).