Wall Street Journal debuts Nielsen's e-book best-seller lists

NEW YORK, US: Showcasing the growing importance of digital books to consumers and the publishing industry alike, The Wall Street Journal has expanded its relationship with Nielsen BookScan to add e-book sales reporting to its customised best-seller charts. The new charts appear weekly as part of WSJ Weekend, the Journal's weekend edition, in print and on WSJ.com.

Since October 2009, Nielsen BookScan has developed fiction, non-fiction, business and a variety of genre spotlight charts for The Wall Street Journal. Now all major e-book retailers will contribute data for four new charts that will include self-published digital releases, children's books and perennials. These combined print and e-book charts for fiction and non-fiction, and e-book-only charts for fiction and non-fiction will also include books priced at 99 cents and above.

In September 2010, the Journal expanded its weekend edition to include added coverage of books in a pull-out section - Books - with reviews and features that spotlight the world's most engaging and important writers. The new e-book sales list as well as existing best-seller charts - along with the books section - appear within the review section of WSJ Weekend.

"As consumers and booksellers continue to embrace the potential of e-books, we are very happy to be working with The Wall Street Journal to produce the most accurate best-seller lists available," said Jonathan Stolper, vice president & general manager, Nielsen BookScan. "These new charts uniquely reflect what people are really buying and reading and will most definitely advance the industry's understanding of e-book best sellers."

About Nielsen BookScan

Nielsen BookScan, which monitors the English-language book industry worldwide, gathers point-of-sale book data from about 12 000 locations across the US, representing about 75% of the nation's book sales. Print-book data providers include all major booksellers and Web retailers, as well as food stores (excluding Walmart and Sam's Club). E-book data providers include all major e-book retailers. BookScan enables its subscribers to access comprehensive reports from a wide variety of perspectives organised by title and author, by category, by region or by DMA. In a typical week, sales of over 400 000 different titles are collected, coded and analysed, producing complete market information for retailers, publishers and the media.