A study by The Economist has found that The New York Times‘s bestseller book list is biased against conservative authors. The study found that books authored by conservatives were at least seven percent less likely to make the newspaper’s weekly bestseller list. However, the analysis excluded household right-wing names in nonfiction like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, who have generally made the list—meaning less known names in conservative political publishing are most impacted.
The study also found that conservative books that make the bestseller list “…rank 2.3 notches lower on the nonfiction list, on average, than those published by other presses with similar sales… .” Low-volume conservative publishers—whose books sell less than 5,000 copies a week—were found to have a much less likely chance of having titles make the list than non-conservative publishers.
In 2017, conservative publisher Regnery stopped communicating its sales data with the New York Times after finding it editorialized its list in order to exclude conservative authors Dinesh D’Souza and Raheem Kassam (the latter now the Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse).
Responding to the study, The New York Times disputed the allegations of bias. “The political views of authors or their publishers have absolutely no bearing on our rankings and are not a factor in how books are ranked on the lists,” the newspaper said. It added: “There are a number of organizations with bestseller lists, each with different methodologies, so it is normal to see different rankings on each.”
