The New York Times announced Thursday morning that it will begin publishing bestseller lists for e-book fiction and nonfiction in early 2011.
The Times’s bestseller lists, established in 1935, are arguably the definitive metric for success in the book publishing world. The addition of two new lists for e-books points to the growing importance of the medium to the industry — and underlines the fact that what may be selling best in hardback or paperback may not be what’s selling best in electronic format.
U.S. consumers are projected to spend $1 billion in e-books this year, according to a recent report from Forrester, who also expects that sales will surpass $3 billion by 2015. Earlier this year, e-tailer Amazon announced that it is now selling more e-books than hardcover books, and that it expects e-books to overtake paperback sales by the end of 2011.
“The vibrant growth of digital publishing has created a need for an impartial, reliable source for tracking and reporting the top-selling e-books across the country,” says Janet Elder, editor of News Surveys for The New York Times.
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