THE official Scottish bestseller list has been exposed as a sham. One book was included that had not sold a single copy and other titles that have sold fewer than 100 copies appear regularly in the top 10.

The list, compiled by the Scottish Publishers Association (SPA), is followed closely by the arts establishment in Scotland and by publishing firms, which use it to promote titles.

It is believed that authors have landed valuable deals on the back of high rankings in the list, which is billed as “the only top 10 listing of bestselling Scottish titles compiled using sales information from a wide range of bookshops throughout Scotland”.

However, when bestseller lists from the past three months were compared with figures from the market analysis firm Nielsen BookData — which collates sales figures from almost every bookshop in Britain — surprising anomalies emerged.

Scone, a political satire by Adam Fergusson published in September, appeared at No 4 during one week in November. According to Nielson BookData, no copies had been sold in the previous week.

Since November at least five of the books in the top 10 list have sold fewer than 100 copies across the UK in the week when they were in the chart.

McCrae’s Battalion by Jack Alexander reached No 6 despite selling just 85 copies. In the week that Elements, a book of Scottish landscape photography by Craig McMaster, entered the bestsellers’ list at No 7 it had sold 80 copies. A sale of 57 copies was enough for Celtic Minded, by Joseph M Bradley, to reach No 8 in the chart, while Rikki and Me, by Kate Fulton, which spent several weeks in the chart, reached No 9 despite selling 43 copies.

Earlier this month The Oilmen by Bill Mackie was No 10 although only 27 copies were sold that week.

Several books entered high on the chart one week — sometimes months after they were first published — and then failed to reappear. No Wonder I Take a Drink by Laura Marney, published last June, charted for one week only in November at No 2. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark appeared at No 8 the previous week, then dropped out.

Last night Scottish authors said the list was no longer credible and should be replaced with an authoritative ranking based on solid sales figures.

Christopher Brookmyre, the bestselling crime author, said: “Whenever this list has come under scrutiny it is my understanding that it has been found to be fairly haphazard. It has been alluded to that some titles get on the list to give them a bit of a leg-up. When one of my books was the only Scottish title in the UK bestseller list it did not appear on the Scottish list anywhere, which I thought odd. Another time one of my older paperbacks made an appearance and then disappeared again.

“Personally I prefer the lists that are compiled by each store — at least you can be sure of the data that they have used.”

James Robertson, the author and poet who won the Saltire Book of the Year award in 2003, said: “It doesn’t appear to bear much resemblance to reality. A few of my books have appeared on it but there are others which I would have thought were doing better, which don’t.”

However, Ian Rankin, who created the Rebus detective series, defended the list which he said was drawn up in good faith. “Usually these lists are very heavily weighted towards authors that sell well down south,” he said.

The SPA said its chart was based on information from Scottish branches of the Waterstone’s and Ottakar’s chains, a Borders book shop in Glasgow and a Blackwell’s in Edinburgh. “As a publicly funded body we can’t justify spending thousands of pounds a year on buying information from Nielson,” said the SPA. “We make no claim that it is completely accurate, but we do take it as an average indication.”

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