Study Finds New York Times Bestseller List Is Strongly Biased Against Conservatives

"The New York Times is pure propaganda," Elon Musk posted on X in March, regarding the newspaper’s highly cited bestseller list.

Musk referenced a report that the Times excluded author Rob Henderson's book "Troubled," a maddening look at the hypocrisy of America’s elite, from the Times' hardcover non-fiction list. "Troubled" had sold more copies than the books ranked fourth and fifth on the chart.

In March 2023, fabled novelist James Patterson disclosed that the best-selling list also excluded a book by Mike Pompeo, despite Donald Trump's former Secretary of State outselling six books that made the list. 

Patterson accused the Times of "cooking the books," to which it responded with a letter admitting it does not rely solely on "raw" sales when placing a title atop its "sales chart."

Unfortunately, the Times did not and has not explained the exact methodology it uses to calculate its bestseller list. But, according to a new study from The Economist, Musk and Patterson are correct in their assessment: The New York Times bestseller list is politically biased.

According to the magazine, books from conservative publishers are estimated to be, on average, 7 percent less likely to make the paper’s bestseller list compared to titles sharing similar sales figures. 

Further analysis found that conservative titles that made the bottom ten of the Publishers Weekly list are 22 percent less likely to make the chart at all. 

"When narrowing the study to compare only political books, the gap increased even more," added Fox News Digital. Nonfiction conservative titles that do make the list rank an average of 2.3 spots behind other books with similar sales.

Consequently, the Economist called upon the Times to release a more transparent list: 

If Alex Jones, a controversial far-right conspiracy theorist, was indeed the second-place bestselling author in America—as Bookscan says he was in August 2022, with a title that was omitted from the New York Times list—people should probably know that. His enduring popularity says a lot about the country and its readers, who are not willing to close the book on him."

Good luck.

The Times downplayed the Economist report, by attributing the discrepancy to "bulk buying." 

"The mission of the Best Seller Lists is to report what books are being purchased most by individual readers across the country while preventing attempts to skew those numbers with bulk purchases," the Times told Fox News. 

"The political views of authors or their publishers have absolutely no bearing on our rankings and are not a factor in calculations. In fact, conservative authors routinely rank on our lists."

However, the study had already considered the possibility of bulk buying in its calculations. The finding concluded that "bulk sales do not appear to explain the bias that we observe in our data" as conservative titles still ranked lower when books marked as "bulk" were considered. 

Ultimately, the New York Times would never admit to manipulating its sales charts – no matter the evidence.  Similarly, Google still claims its search results are organic.

Yet recently leaked documents from inside Google – which the tech company confirmed were authentic – claim the search engine not only manually ranks websites but that 63 percent of articles on Google News are from "left-leaning outlets," compared to just 6 percent from "right-leaning sources."

Apple also claims its podcast rankings are honest and without bias.

Jeremy Carl is the author of "The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart," one of the most well-reported, disquieting books of 2024.

He provided the following commentary to OutKick on Thursday:

"It's obvious the New York Times Bestseller list (and the New York Times Book Review) is biased against conservative books-- It's a rather blatant attempt to shape the approved narrative on their part."

By cooking the books, the New York Times can readily dictate which messages, theses, versions of history, and reporting are amplified and not. As Elon Musk wanted, the list is "pure propaganda."