Methodology & Sourcing

The Consensus Score is a transparent, weighted measure of how many credible lists a book appears on. It is our own editorial metric — not a user rating and not a paid placement.

How the Consensus Score is calculated

For each book, we sum a contribution from every credible list it appears on:

• Source authority — each source carries a weight from 0 to 1 based on its editorial credibility.
• Recency — more recent listings count for more, decaying by 15% per year to a floor of 0.40.
• Award status — appearing on a shortlist or winning an award applies a bonus multiplier (1.1× shortlisted, 1.25× winner).

The weighted sum is normalized to a 0–100 score. Every book page shows the full breakdown, so you can see exactly which lists produced the number.

How we source lists

• We reproduce only the fact that a book appears on a list, plus our own original commentary. We never copy a publisher's editorial text.
• Every list page credits and links to the original source.
• Book metadata and covers come from Google Books and Open Library — never from Amazon.