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#46 |
Plan B Is Now In Force
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Bestseller lists just mean the most sold and usually has no connection to reading satisfaction. Oprah says "I am reading XX now" and the Oprah-sheep immediately go out and buy XX. Voila! Instant bestseller. But how many of them actually read the book completely to the end and enjoy it? Grisham or King or Patterson put out a new book, and all of their fans buy a copy. Voila! Instant bestseller. But is it a good book or one that wasn't really worth buying? A NYT book reviewer says "You MUST read this book" and all of those who follow the NYT Book Section rush out to buy it. Voila! Instant bestseller. But how many of them actually read the book completely to the end and enjoy it?
Most of my favorite authors have never made and will never make the NYT Best Seller list. I don't check the list with any regularity (let me just say that I do like the NYT, think it's a great newspaper) because most of the books that show up on the fiction lists, I don't want to read. I don't want to read any of the self-help books that always appear on the non-fiction lists. So the fact that ebooks are going to be listed is relatively meaningless to me because I won't be using it to search for books to read. I can, however, appreciate the fact that by giving ebooks their own Best Seller listing, they are validating ebooks and making ebooks come of age as a legitimate source of reading material. If I want to find the ebooks that people ACTUALLY are reading though, I'll check the listings on the Dark Net. Except for the people who do the monthly bulk upload of ebooks, folks tend to post the books that they enjoy reading and want to share with others - not books that others should read or must read just to follow a trend. ![]() |
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#47 |
Grand Master of Flowers
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Thanks!
If you don't want to be considered an arrogant elitist, you might consider not putting everyone who reads bestsellers into the "following the herd" category. Things may not be good because they are popular, but they aren't bad because they're popular, either. |
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#48 | |
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I've got stuff on my shelves that hit the best-seller list, but that wasn't WHY I read it. I read it because I knew the author's work well enough to be sure it would be worthwhile, a friend whose tastes mesh well with mine suggested it, it looked interesting in a sales display, I ran across a favorable mention on a web forum/someone's Facebook/etc., and so on. Let me guess, you take the NYT or Oprah as your reading guide and will not read that which your reading guide has not pronounced blessings on as "important", "meaningful", etc. Only explanation I can think of for the amount of energy you've poured into a defensive tizzy over some faceless online stranger expressing differing selection criteria. |
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#49 |
Eudaimonia
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Honestly, i don't even look at the bestseller lists... what are they for? I can see a good use for publishers to use data from sales so they can do their stats and decide what area to invest or launch new themes, etc, but why on earth should i care about what other people are reading and why is it so important for people to know what is been selling more the last week? I confess i really do not know.
The only thing i care about in books is the quality of the book and writing, the subject, and the author if it is an author i read before and liked. I would never read a book or go see a film just because everyone else is going. That says nothing about the quality of the book.... Why do some people care so much about it? Last edited by Salgueiros; 11-16-2010 at 06:15 PM. |
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#50 | |||
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And really, there's no reason to be so patronizing of people who buy best-sellers. Unless you're reading Kritik der reinen Vernunft for the 20th time and writing your own English translation, I doubt your tastes are anywhere near as impressive as you think they are. Sorry. ![]() Quote:
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#51 | ||
Plan B Is Now In Force
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My point about the list is not that my taste in books is so elevated or impressive (it isn't at all - quite the contrary in fact ![]() I find interesting the defensive tone people are taking toward those of us who are dismissing the inordinate value being placed on the bestseller lists, by trying to apply the label of elitist to us. You, for example, immediately jumped to the erroneous conclusion that I must think that my reading tastes are more impressive than others. ![]() Quote:
Getting a book via the Dark Net doesn't mean that the person is less likely to read it. I think that the popularity of a book on the Dark Net might actually be more indicative of its value, since it's not being influenced as much by marketing strategies and instead more by word-of-mouth. A lot of people who do upload books take the time and effort to convert them into multiple formats, create TOC's, correct errors, etc. People don't usually invest that kind of time and effort for books they don't read themselves. |
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#52 | |||
Grand Master of Flowers
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And then you point out that you are different from them because *you* choose your entertainment based on your "own tastes," not "the herd mind." Quote:
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#53 | ||||
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![]() I concur that some of it is not impressive literature, I just don't see any particularly pressing reason to slam the people who buy it, or any reason to presume they don't read it. Clearly people read the Harry Potter and Dan Brown books, for example. There are also tons of books that follow The Formulas and fail to catch on, or that purposely avoid The Formula and take off. Quote:
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Plus there are, I have little doubt, some people who acquire pirated materials out of an acquisitionist urge -- it's free, so why not collect as much as you can? Or to put it another way, I don't see any particular reason to view pirates as enlightened readers and purchasers as saps who don't bother to finish reading the books they buy. Last edited by Kali Yuga; 11-17-2010 at 06:32 PM. |
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#54 | |
Plan B Is Now In Force
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I believe the question I was asking was "how many of them actually read the book completely to the end and enjoy it?". I also said, "Bestseller lists just mean the most sold and usually has no connection to reading satisfaction." Are you suggesting that being on the bestseller list means that all people who read those books read them through to the end and enjoy the books completely?
Except for my rather snide label about the Oprah-recommended-book readers, I wasn't "slamming" anyone. You're the one who is trying to apply the "elitist" label to me. My comments are based upon my observations of the people I interact with who do read the books on the NYT list - just because they are on that list. So I was wondering if that extrapolated to the world at large - how many people do actually read those books through and actually enjoy what they read? I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard, "I don't know what the big deal is about that book. I'm glad that I got it out of the library - I would have been pissed if I paid money for it", and other comments to that effect. We perhaps run in different crowds - I do know people who view having read books that are on the bestseller lists as adding cachet to their conversations about books. My point about predictability was that the content of the books on the list usually broadly contains a majority of the book types I outlined. That's why they keep turning up on the list. Of course what I suggested isn't set in stone, and there are always books that are unique and do bring something new and original to the table, but there are usually always a good representation of the Formula books week in and week out. Quote:
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#55 | |
Trying for calm & polite
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Have you ever actually looked at the books Oprah has chosen? They are not all to my taste either, but reading them doesn't seem like anything to look down upon.
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Last edited by taming; 11-18-2010 at 03:10 AM. |
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#56 | |
Grand Master of Flowers
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#57 |
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Andrew, welcome to my ignore file. I'm done with having everything I say twisted as an excuse to scream and rant and rave at me for daring to express the opinion that the best-seller lists (made up of pre-selected works, BTW) are not the only good or valid source of TBR lists, nor is Queen Oprah.
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