[ve55]

The interesting thing about the methodology page is that it consistently uses strongly-worded and reassuring terms, but at no point do they mention any numbers or statistics whatsoever. It's made to appear as if they're transparent, but it doesn't actually offer you anything of the sort. Additionally, we can read it and find lines like the following:

>if and when they are included, are at the discretion of The New York Times Best-Seller List Desk editors based on standards for inclusion that encompass proprietary vetting and audit protocols, corroborative reporting

This seems to fit with another quote that a commenter here found for us:

>In 1983 (as part of a legal argument) the Times stated that the list is not mathematically objective but rather editorial content.

On top of this, there's likely to be biases in the information they receive: It's obvious that every large book store in the country (including all digital platforms) doesn't report directly to the NYT, and it would be very unlikely for there to be no bias in which stores decide to work with the NYT or not.