Conventional bestseller lists often have complicated and opaque algorithms for ranking books.

This is partially because conventional bestseller lists rely on information from numerous sources, such as individual publishers, bookstore chains, retail outlets, and other institutions. Even so, their information on book sales is always incomplete, because they may not get information from all bookselling outlets, including, for example, some independent bookstores.

Leanpub's bestseller lists are different, in that we are the only source of information, so our information is always both complete and current.

Our main bestseller list is what you will see if you click on "Books" at the top of a Leanpub page:

Clicking on "Books" will take you to this page in our bookstore:

https://leanpub.com/bookstore?type=book

There, you will see that by default, the bestseller list is Bestsellers Last Week:

Bestsellers Last Week is the same bestseller list that we call Top Books on our homepage:

Bestsellers Last Week ranks books using a combination of revenue and copies sold.

To pick an extreme example, a book that sold a million free copies in the last week, would rank higher than a book that sold one copy for $0.99.

In the bookstore, if you click on the dropdown at the top on the left, you will see we also have other lists, in addition to Bestsellers Last Week:

Below is an explanation of each of those lists.

This list ranks books by revenue and copies sold in the past seven days.

This list ranks books by "lifetime" revenue and copies sold.

These books are ranked just like other books are, but the ranking is scoped to books that currently have a Free Minimum Price, including books that are set to be Free With Membership.

These books are ranked just like other books are, but the ranking is scoped to books that currently are set to be Free With Membership.

These books are ranked just like other books are, but the ranking is scoped to books that currently have a Free Minimum Price, but excluding books that are set to be Free With Membership..

This is a list books published for the first time on Leanpub, with the most recent on top.

Leanpub books can be "published" multiple times; authors are encouraged to publish new versions early and often. You can find out more about "Lean Publishing" here:

Leanpub books can be updated by their authors at any time. This list shows recently updated books in reverse chronological order.

If you have any questions or feedback for this article, please email the Leanpub Team at hello@leanpub.com.

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