By Ingrid Süßmann
In December 2015, Germany’s Bild newspaper and Amazon Germany announced a cooperation to offer a new bestseller list for fiction and nonfiction that will include traditional and self-published books, as well as multiple book formats. This list is published weekly — on www.bestseller.bild.de every Wednesday evening and in the Thursday print edition.
Bild is a German tabloid newspaper with a daily print run of 2.8 million copies and over 16 million monthly unique visitors to its website. It was first published in 1952 and is owned by the Axel Springer Verlag, one of Europe’s biggest media companies with a sales turnover of 3 billion euros in 2014.
All information the bestseller list comes from Amazon.de, using a sales period of Sunday to Saturday and including sales in every format for each title — hardcover, paperback, ebook.
This approach is a new one. The Spiegel Bestseller List, first published in 1961, derives its data from over 500 bookstores across Germany and consists of several “sub-lists”, each focusing on different formats and genres:
- Hardcover (Fiction/Nonfiction)
- Paperback (Fiction/Nonfiction)
- Trade Paperback (Fiction/Nonfiction)
- Children and Young Adult Books
- Cinema
- DVD
- Audiobooks
Audiobooks and books read via Kindle Unlimited are not part of the new Bild bestseller list. However, all German books will be counted, including self-published titles and traditionally published books. Two lists will be published: the Top 20 Fiction and the Top 20 Nonfiction. While the online version on bild.de will feature all titles (including a “click to buy” link to Amazon, only the Top 10 titles from both lists will be available in print.
Thorsten Schero, Director Media for Amazon.de, said: “The Bild bestseller list is a fantastic opportunity to promote reading and also show customers what a wide range Amazon has to offer. We’re happy to have found Bild, a media partner with such a wide coverage, for a topic as exciting as reading.”