Making the list: a cultural history of the American bestseller, 1900-1999, by Michael Korda

 

I picked up this book in the Books about Books section of the Dog Ears Used Bookstore in Hoosick, NY a couple of weeks ago. It gives the history of the bestseller lists and includes the lists for every year of the 20th century. Based mostly on the Publishers Weekly lists, it reveals trends in American interests, showing that they haven't changed all that much in the last hundred years. Nonfiction lists reflect the times (war, political scandals, celebrity biographies), but also include diet, health, and cooking. Fiction lists went from novels geared primarily toward women in the early part of the century to bigger books that were marketed at both men and women. Author Michael Korda demonstrates that the fiction list has become much more difficult to break into as popular authors developed a rhythm of publishing a book a year and came to dominate the bestseller lists year after year. The book also touches upon changes in both publishing and bookselling, but ends without touching upon Amazon or other online retailers, and just briefly mentions e-books and how they might change the landscape. Korda devotes a chapter to each decade, introducing it with an essay that points out the highlights, then providing the lists by year. In the early years there was only a fiction list, but nonfiction was added in 1912. Both the fiction and nonfiction lists were expanded from 10 titles to 15 in 1978.