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Comment by DanielleMolloy | Hacker News Reader

As far as I know the Spiegel list, which has a lot of media and book shop presence does not count Amazon. The GfK in German has an exklusive deal with Amazon for data, and they do not deliver the Spiegel list data. The Spiegel list also uses an additional voting scheme among their journalists.

I have found the Spiegel list a bit weird for years, it contains a lot of highly light reading or polemic stuff like that guy yelling at today’s youth. That it does not include Amazon data explains quite something.

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I just compared the two lists, and there aren't many differences: only one of Amazon's top 10 didn't make it onto the SPIEGEL list ("Homo Deus").

The lists are at https://www.amazon.de/charts/2019-08-11/mostread/nonfiction?... https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/bestseller-buecher-belletristi...

It's all German, obviously. And note that Spiegel has at least two different lists, for hardcover and paperback (plus a few more, less relevant).

FWIW I'm surprised by the claim that Spiegel has too much "light-reading" in its bestsellers. The usual charge is that they exclude certain lowbrow titles/categories.

The Amazon list (20 top items binned across hardcovers, paperbacks and audiobooks, which is correct if your goal is to identify a "zeitgeist trend") and the Spiegel lists (for an unknown reason, separate lists for paperback, hardcover and "Taschenbuch", 60 items in 3 lists [1]) have 11 books in common right now.

However if I only look at a single Spiegel list of 20 items, e.g. hardcovers there are only two items left in common.

I think you will agree that a book sales data analysis that has not made a successful effort to include one of the biggest book sellers in Germany for years can still safely be called garbage. It is baffling for me how much reputation the Spiegel lists still have.

Also, the hardcover Spiegel list has entries like the new book by Spiegel journalist Todenhöfer on rank 10 (rank 2129 on Amazon Germany right now).

[1] I ignored the Spiegel audiobooks list because this data is irrelevant without Audible.

Todenhöfer is not a Spiegel journalist. Not at all.

DER SPIEGEL gets its book data from der Buchreport which uses sales info from a few hundred actual bookstores.

Thus the list is not 'garbage', but a represents what bookstores sell and what is currently trending. The list is also filtered by some criteria, which are listed on the SPIEGEL site.

There is not a single authorative list of bestsellers. Also note that most of those list are supposed to be marketing tools, that can't afford to be too boring or predictable, not a reflections of "raw" sales data.

A list of German Language Bestseller lists: https://www.boersenverein.de/de/158283

Also the Spiegel list removes books it doesn't like.

https://www.welt.de/kultur/article167043384/Spiegel-verteidi...

Please be accurate. Correct would be: They removed a book they consider anti-semitic. That is quite different from what you stated.

But great to include the source.

That's their reasoning. Which doesn't mean at all that he's not right. In case of doubt read the book.

Funny enough the owner of Der Spiegel was himself considered an anti-semite by the Wiesenthal Center[1] a few years ago which stirred quite some debate back then.

[1] https://m.jpost.com/International/Wiesenthal-dean-labels-Aug...

He isn’t (and never was) the owner of Spiegel. He’s the son of the Spiegel’s founder and former editor in chief.

It's the same thing, isn't it?

No. Have you ever hard a joke that is racist or sexist but still made you laugh in spite of yourself?

How does this relate to removing books from a bestseller (or whatever) list?

The point is removing something you don't like is different from removing something that is anti-semitic. My example is a joke that makes you laugh but is inappropriate. It is possible to enjoy something and at the same time realize that it is offensive.

No, there is no difference. The reason there is no difference is that there doesn't exist a rulebook accessible to anyone containing a part about removing "things considered anti-semitic" for this particular case.

They claim (or at least claimed) to be a bestselling list. This makes that claim obviously false.

Both are correct. They removed a book they didn't like because they considered it to be anti-semitic. They are not exclusive.

Both statements are technically correct. One statement clearly transports the facts, the other is massively misleading.

The additional use of "books" is further misleading and technically not correct. It is one single book.

Is see no reason to defend this spreading of misinformation. Do you?

They were caught with one, that's enough. I am free and confident to interpret that as: The list is 100% made up.

I disagree that it's misleading, because the reason is not stated.

"Books" may not be correct in this context because it's been a single one thus far, but if another antisemitic book appears, they'd probably delete it too, so I'd argue it sounds more like a norm than a one-off event. By removing a book they didn't like, they opened a can of worms, so to say.

> I disagree that it's misleading, because the reason is not stated.

No, the reason is clearly stated. "Did not like" is a reason. I am sure there have been many books on that list that the people at spiegel didn't like. It's just that "I don not like that" is not the same as "this thing is considered by me and many others to spread antisemitic propaganda and I don want to support that".

The original statement implies that "we don't like it" is sufficient reason for the spiegel to remove a book from the list. That is just incorrect.

> ... they opened a can of worms, so to say.

Now you seem to be arguing that it is fine to spread a lie as long as you are sufficiently convinced that that lie will become truth in the future?

If they removed a book because they didn't like it because it was antisemitic, then it's clear to me that they will most likely do so again in the future for antisemitism and, maybe, for other reasons.

That's what happens with having editorial control: either you play sides (by removing stuff you don't want and maybe pumping up stuff you like[]) or you don't play sides (by publishing the rank without modifying it). And Spiegel is playing sides here.

[]I'm not saying Spiegel has done or will do this, this is just an example.

None of that makes the statement "the Spiegel list removes books it doesn't like" correct in a meaningful sense of the word.

But I think I argued my point as well as I can. If I couldn't convince you yet that the original statement should not be considered "correct" and should not be defended when somebody mentions the actual facts, I don't think any more of my words will.

You are looking at that sentence too literally/technically. As a reader, I never considered it to mean "they remove novels when they don't like the story". Instead, from the tone, context (an internet discussion) and knowledge of how the list is likely to work, it seemed likely to me that the link would refer to one or more books being removed for political reasons.

The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.

You and the others should consider that the reason the Spiegel gave was a lie. There is quite a heavy motive for doing so: the book is on the other side of the political spectrum, considering where the Spiegel lies.

> The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.

I think that is actually a great summary, thx.

I guess my long conversation here is just an expression of my underlying impression that political discourse should in general focus more on facts than on feelings.

People seem to be more focused on how they feel about an issue than its actual contents. But this is getting of topic.

Not only did they remove it, because they considered it to be anti-semitic. One of their own authors sat on the committee and (unfairly or at least it was very unusual) used all of his votes for this one book for several months. So he distorted the outcome. And they decided to drop the book. Since it was an employee who caused the distortion in the first place, what‘s wrong with other employees fixing this?

I think the Spiegel list also does not count total sales but relative sales over a time span, so you can become a "best seller author" with rather low sales numbers, when everybody has sold only few books. Strange system.

So in a month with slow book sales, you'd prefer to see best sellers replaced with least bad sellers? But the term "best" is relative, absolutely!

Nah, but "best seller author" to me refers to somewhat like "sold 100k copies" and not like "sold better than the others in a bad month". It's just a detail in the end.

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