Night Shade Books editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen sez:

So, I just found out that the Night Shade title THE LIVING DEAD made the NY Times best seller REPORTING "In Contention" list.

It doesn’t mean the book made the list (regular or extended), but what it probably means that it shifted enough copies at the distributors and wholesalers that it was one of the top books in its category (Trade Paperback adult fiction), and is thus considered "In Contention" and retailers are asked to enter the number of copies sold. Without this prompting, a book only gets counted if it is a "write in" title, and books that are write ins almost never make the list.

A Rough estimate shows that just under 100 books get pre-listed in this category each week.

I’ll find out on Tuesday if we made the extended list. But still. It’s kind of cool. For the last couple years, one of our company goals has been to crack the NY Times Extended list. This is a nice first step.

Oh, and if you were planning on buying The Living Dead, or get copies for people as a gift, if you were to all run out and buy it this week, That might help us for next week. If everybody who reads this message buys 2 copies, and posts this message to their blog, we’ll be on! 

Yeah, so holy crap.