Fair Use & Attribution Policy

Why this page exists

SHORTLIST sits at the intersection of journalism, data curation, and commerce: we track which books appear on the year's most credible “best of” lists — published by outlets like the New York Times, The Economist, the Financial Times, McKinsey, and dozens of others — and we compute our own Consensus Score from that data. Because we reference so many respected publishers and institutions, we want to be completely transparent — to readers, to the Sources we cite, and to anyone evaluating whether our practices are fair — about exactly what we do and don't reproduce.

What we reproduce

• The fact of list membership. That “Book X appeared on [Source]'s [Year] [List Name]” is a fact, and facts are not protected by copyright. We record this fact, the list's title, its publication date, and a link to the original.
• Our own original commentary. Every book, list, and source page includes editorial analysis and context we write ourselves — never copied or closely paraphrased from the Source's own text.
• The Consensus Score, our own proprietary metric, with a transparent breakdown of exactly which Sources contributed and how they were weighted.
• Book metadata (titles, authors, ISBNs, publication dates, cover images, short descriptions) sourced from the Google Books API and Open Library API — public data sources built for this purpose — never scraped from Amazon or any retailer.
• Source names, displayed solely to identify and link to the original list (see “Trademark use” below).

What we do NOT reproduce

• We do not copy a publisher's editorial blurb, review text, or description of a book — verbatim, in substantial part, or in close paraphrase.
• We do not reproduce a Source's full list layout, design, or the complete text of their article.
• We do not scrape or cache paywalled content.
• We do not source book covers or descriptions from Amazon or other retailers' listings.
• We do not present the Consensus Score as if it were any Source's own rating, review, or endorsement.

Why we link out — always

Every list page and every book's “Appears on these lists” module links directly to the Source's original publication. This is a deliberate design principle: attribution and outbound linking are how we respect the Sources whose curatorial work created the underlying signal, let readers verify our facts against the original, and send traffic to — rather than substitute for — the Source's own content. This mirrors how established aggregators in adjacent categories operate: film and TV review aggregators compile scores from critics' published reviews and link to each original review rather than reproducing it, and literary review aggregators average grades from dozens of outlets while linking to every original. We follow the same model, applied to “best of” list membership.

Trademark use: nominative fair use

We display the names of Sources such as the New York Times, The Economist, and McKinsey & Company. This use is nominative — it exists solely to truthfully identify which institution published a given list — and nothing about it suggests that any Source endorses, sponsors, or is affiliated with SHORTLIST. We use only as much of each mark as is necessary for identification, we display a clear not-affiliated disclosure in our Terms of Use and site footer, and we will promptly honor any Source's request to adjust or remove a specific usage.

The Consensus Score: our opinion, not theirs

The Consensus Score is entirely our own editorial creation — computed from publicly observable facts (which lists include which books) using a methodology we publish and control. No Source calculates, endorses, or reviews it. It is never presented as a consumer or critic rating, because it isn't one — it is our own analysis of publicly available list data, comparable to how an index or ranking publication compiles its own score from underlying public facts.

Book covers & metadata licensing

Cover images and descriptive metadata are retrieved via the Google Books API and Open Library API, both designed for third-party display and used within their published terms of service. We never use Amazon-sourced images or descriptions.

Corrections & objections

If you are a Source, publisher, author, or rights holder and believe we have mischaracterized your list, exceeded factual or nominative use, or should adjust how we display your name, contact us at hello@yearbestbooks.com. We respond to good-faith inquiries promptly. For formal legal notices, see the process in our Terms of Use §6.

Last updated: July 23, 2026.