This report highlights the books featured on the New York Times (NYT) Bestsellers List between 1942 and 2017 with a particular focus on the books which have been featured as #1.
It has been built by myself and @AlexBlair (Altius) in response to the London Power BI User Group (PUG) data viz challenge for May/June 2018.
The intended audience for this report are book fans/readers of the NYT Bestsellers List looking to explore titles they might like to read next, or literature journalists reporting on the history of, and featured books on, the NYT Bestsellers list.
The contents below highlight the key questions each report page answers in the story it tells. In addition this report showcases some key functionality which can be achieved in Power BI reports including expandable/collapsable panes on each page (one for filters and one for page navigation), and a number of Custom Visuals (e.g. Pulse Chart, Enlighten Data Storyteller, Narratives for PBI, Strippet Browser, Timeline Storyteller).
The design for the report is based on the Power BI Gartner Bake Off Example developed by the PBI Product team. The data sources for the report include an API from the NYT Booksellers Site, Google Books data and the dataset behind a Tableau report on the same topic developed by Katie Smith.
Key Questions answered by the report:
#1s
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Which books have been most successful in (with the longest number of consecutive weeks at #1) through the history of the NYT Bestsellers List (Overall/by Genre)?
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Which Genres have the highest number of distinct successful authors (Who have had #1 books)? Who are the authors that have had #1 Books in each Genre?
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Which Genres have had the highest number of books at #1 (overall/for a given period)? What are these #1 books and who are the authors of them?
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Which genre has the highest number of ‘one-hit wonders’ (books that have only appeared on the NYT bestsellers once) overall or over a given period? What are these books and who are the authors of them?
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What is the gender diversity across #1 Bestselling book authors? Has there been a marked change in this diversity mix over the history of the NYT list or over the past few years in particular?
Genre Analysis
For a given Genre:
- How does the number of books at #1 compare with other genres over time?
- How does the number of authors of #1 books compare with other genres over time?
- Which years have had the highest number of #1 books over time?
- What are the books that are #1 in each year and who are the authors of them?
- Which authors are the most successful within the genre (Highest number of books at #1) and in which year(s) did they have their #1 hits?
Latest Year Analysis
- For the latest full year of the NYT Booksellers list, which NYT Lists, Authors and Publishers are featured most within the year? (Both in terms of number of books and Average number of weeks books have been on the NYT Lists in total?)
- Which are the books which have been featured within the year (both at #1 and other rankings)? Who are the authors/publishers of these books and on which NYT List are they featured?
We hope you enjoy the report and we welcome any questions you might have about it
Thanks
Rishi & Alex
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