system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is nearly every book that is written nowadays listed as a “#1 New York Times Bestseller”? Something isn’t adding up to me.
gpt
The New York Times is just a popularity list. So things are ranked by week, month, year like any other list.

So if you are the only major book released in the week you might be an instant number one. 

In reality though there are so many books released every week it’s a half a decent metric to go by as any. An astronomical number of books are released that don’t end up on the list, just the ones popular enough to afford advertising are the ones you hear of.