“If Nielsen BookScan date are more accurate and more timely” because they’re based on actual register sales, “why do newspapers and magazines continue to go through the effort of compiling their own lists?” asks Marina Krakovsky. In an in-depth Washington Post report, she reveals many in the industry have criticisms of BookScan. Publishers Weekly editor Nora Rawlinson says she misses the “additional information on how books are selling” that comes with “that constant contact with booksellers” that lists compiled by journalists have. Bantam Dell publisher Irwyn Applebaum, meanwhile, says BookScan is “by no means complete.” He observes that it does not include sales from Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and “also from drugstores, supermarkets, the smaller independents, and retailers — like Williams-Sonoma — that sell a few cookbooks alongside their pots and pans.” Meanwhile, despite criticism of newspaper bestseller lists, in particular the methods employed by the New York Times Bestseller List, “For all its precision in numbers, Nielsen BookScan . . . is finding it difficult to compete with that kind of prestige.”