The term “best-seller” used to mean something.

It meant some pencil-necked rube working for the New York Times liked your book. But these days everybody and his dog has a best-seller list. Some of these people try to actually base their lists on actual books sold. The nerve.

Locus Magazine, the venerable SFF  industry mag, compiles an SFF best-seller list from numbers reported to them by Borders/Walden, B&N/B.Dalton, Bakka-Phoenix, Borderlands, McNally Robinson, Mysterious Galaxy, Pages for All Ages, St. Mark’s, Toadstool, Uncle Hugo’s, and White Dwarf. The latest issue of Locus reports that The Way of Shadows is the #2 best-selling fantasy paperback. Woo hoo! Shadow’s Edge rolled in at a respectable #6. Beyond the Shadows was a conspicuous no-show (the data was from November, before BtS was published, so one hopes that had something to do with it). The online edition isn’t updated yet, but this link is to the previous month’s list.

Not sure how to reconcile the three–could the indies be moving a lot more copies of my books than the big bad Joe Foxes of the world?–but I don’t show up at all on the latest Barnes and Noble/B. Dalton SFF list. And Borders has Charlaine Harris absolutely dominating their list, still. She has SFF paperback spots 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8. I did sneak into the middle of all that southern vampire lovin’ to take spot #5. I thought they said if I wanted my books to sell like mad, “you should show with BO,” so I swore off deodorant immediately.

Have a show with HBO. H B O.