Who decides what is fine literature and what is not? When Elke Heidenreich found herself on the non-fiction bestseller list, she got into a fight with the creators. A case and its faintly misogynistic undertones.
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Felix Stephen
In order to understand what’s going on here, you have to know how the bestseller list is created, so here’s a little instruction manual: A company called Media Control collects information at the tills of bookstores which books are sold and provides the figures to the trade magazine book report. Its editors then put together the various bestseller lists, in a very old-fashioned way by hand. He sends the finished lists book report to the news magazine The mirror.