Rave: How Cool Is This?

As I was perusing the July 13, 2019 New York Times Best Seller Hardcover Fiction list I got to the end and thought…

I read it again to reconfirm, and then one more time to re-reconfirm.

My eyes had not deceived me:

NINE OF THE 15 HARDCOVER FICTION
BEST SELLER AUTHORS ARE WOMEN!

Nine of the 15 – that’s WAY COOL!

AND YES, I know all-upper case is online shouting, but this really is something to shout about.

See for yourself:  Here’s my less-than-perfect reproduction of the July 13 list with my count added in red on the right.

Read ‘em and smile:

I went online to find out if this huge disparity had happened before.

No one seemed to be talking about this happening before, or if this was a first.

Then I googled to find out who else was celebrating this, and so far, sadly…

No one was.

And that’s too bad.

Because the New York Times Best Seller lists are pretty much the first and last word on the books people are buying, and the staying power of each book.

Like #1 Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing – 42 weeks on the list.

That’s staying power.

Plus new books by already published authors – #4 Danielle Steel, Lost and Found.

And new books by first-time published authors – #15 Linda Holmes, Evvie Drake Starts Over.

Wow – not bad for a first novel!

Here’s another reason it’s too bad no one has (yet) taken notice of those nine out of 15:

This article is from 2017, when author Rosie Cima did a fascinating exploration of “gender balance” on the New York Times Best Seller list, which Cima called “the equivalent of the Billboard Hot 100 for literature, tracking the weekly 10-15 best-selling books since the 1940s.”

Cima crunched a lot of numbers and provided a lot of visuals, including this one:

And this one:

At the end Cima concluded, “The gender ratio on the Best Seller list has been frozen at under 50% since the early 2000s.  The statistics suggest publishers and critics aren’t giving these new young authoresses the chance they deserve.”

Cima’s numbers covered decades.

I won’t focus on decades.

I’m focusing on just this one amazing week:

The week of July 13, 2019.

When WOMEN dominated the New York Times Best Seller Hardcover Fiction list: