The Christian Science Monitor does the LibraryThing
Tomorrow's edition of The Christian Science Monitor includes the article "Do Your Own LibraryThing" by Jim Regan, already available online. It's a sunny, detailed look at LibraryThing, "poised to turn the cataloging of books into a form of communal recreation."
With luck some the article will spawn others, but I'm particularly happy they got to it first. The Monitor's a great newspaper—international, in-depth and analytical. It's been knocked about a bit recently, but it has made great strides on the web. The LibraryThing article shows CM's strengths: instead of a glib focus on library-size competition or the seeming dominance of J. K. Rowling (see below), Regan describes the site in detail, like someone who's actually used it. The reader can make up their own mind.
So, hats off to Regan and welcome to Monitor readers—send me an email and tell me what you think of it!
J. K. Rowling and the popularity myth
I'm going to set it to show more of the top authors for context. People do have a lot of Harry Potter books but people have a lot of books generally—Rowling is only 1/3 of a percent of the total. In fact, LibraryThing exposes the popularity myth. For example, while Dan Brown seems so popular right now, his 379 books are beaten by Umberto Eco's 476 and trounced by Jane Austen's 736. C. S. Lewis flings him down and dances on him—1,706!
When's the last time you read a newspaper article entitled "Dan Brown is selling well this year, but it's not that big a deal in context"?
With luck some the article will spawn others, but I'm particularly happy they got to it first. The Monitor's a great newspaper—international, in-depth and analytical. It's been knocked about a bit recently, but it has made great strides on the web. The LibraryThing article shows CM's strengths: instead of a glib focus on library-size competition or the seeming dominance of J. K. Rowling (see below), Regan describes the site in detail, like someone who's actually used it. The reader can make up their own mind.
So, hats off to Regan and welcome to Monitor readers—send me an email and tell me what you think of it!
J. K. Rowling and the popularity myth
I'm going to set it to show more of the top authors for context. People do have a lot of Harry Potter books but people have a lot of books generally—Rowling is only 1/3 of a percent of the total. In fact, LibraryThing exposes the popularity myth. For example, while Dan Brown seems so popular right now, his 379 books are beaten by Umberto Eco's 476 and trounced by Jane Austen's 736. C. S. Lewis flings him down and dances on him—1,706!
When's the last time you read a newspaper article entitled "Dan Brown is selling well this year, but it's not that big a deal in context"?
posted by Tim at 8:14 PM
11 Comments:
I agree with you regarding the CSM, a paper of worthy ambition, as I put it in May.
http://snailraces.blogspot.com/2005/05/language-blogging.html
illegitimus non carborundum
wuxihz
Great newspaper, superb article - and fantastic publicity for LibraryThing.
I'm especially pleased that the CSM gave the reporter sufficient wordspace to explain the different features and "angles" of LibraryThing, and just why it's charmed so many of us. It's hard to capture all this in a thunbnail piece!
If you're going to compare Dan Brown with C.S. Lewis or Jane Austen in context, then you would have to factor in the number of books that each wrote and the length of time these have been in publication. Dan Brown is certainly not as talented as either of the other two, but he is definitely more popular today.
I want to point out the problem with the term "popular today."
It seems to me that the idea is falsely attracted to the current marketing metric. In a basic sense, Dan Brown is not more popular today than C. S. Lewis. He's a good deal less popular. It's just that Brown is sellling his books in a short period of time and that time is now. Similarly one could say that pet rock was for a time "more popular" than the pet dog, but there were always more pet dogs owned than than pet rocks, not to mention the dogs were loved more. That dogs were bought over a length of time is an indicator of popularity, not the opposite.
I'd argue that by showing what people actually own LibraryThing is a good antidote to the hit culture. The slow accumulation of C. S. Lewis books (or Jane Austen, etc.) is more important than a momentary fad. It should give book people some perspective.
I don't think I'm saying anything very new here. Although publishing has something of a "hit" mentality, I'm sure there are lots of publishing execs intimate with long-range publishing figures. In fact, publishers make all their money on the "back list" not the current offerings. The publisher I used to work for had the US rights to Tolkien. Now that's a franchise to have!
In fact instead of saying "more popular today" one should probably phrase it "more popular right this instant". As opposed to popular for the last 2 centuries (like Jane). 2 centuries from now, in fact 2 years from now, nobody's going to be reading Dan Brown, and I doubt that they're going to be heading out to replace their old copy either once it gets left out in the rain. While I discovered while cataloging my Austen (I haven't got to my C.S. Lewis collection yet) that my copy of Emma, and of Lady Susan, had vanished somewhere, and I promptly re-ordered them. A household without a complete set of Austen? Unthinkable! :)
So I really like how LibraryThing shows what books people really value over time, not just the ones they bought to read on the subway last week.
(p.s. to previous: I admit, my husband also has a complete set of Austen. But I feel that I must also have my OWN set of Austen - if only because I don't understand his filing system and can never find any of his books...)
I have to agree with klytaimnestra regarding "real" popularity. While I have copies of two or three Dan Brown books in my collection, if they don't find their way home when I lend them out it is no big loss. On the other hand, while cataloguing my collection I am making note of books that I can't find or are in bad shape that I "must" replace - books I cannot bear to not have. Those are the popular books.
Or perhaps I'm just confusing popularity with value...
Or perhaps I'm just confusing popularity with value...
That's an interesting point. Those two rarely equate, but the other key thing about a 'valuable' book is how long it's stood the test of time. Some books, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, give them a decade or so, and check back in later. LibraryThing seems to have attracted readers who like what's popular now, but concentration on what they've loved in times past.
I am surprised to hear that Dan Brown is beaten by Eco, though.
But I admit to being curious about number of books in porportion to output. I'm a Patrick O'Brian fan. It seems that the majority of his readers here have amost all of his Aubrey-Maturin series, but rarely anything else of his. However, anyone who has that entire series has picked up 20+ books. [And if you wonder about me, I just went out and got the five-volume edition]
Or, for another angle, what about Discworld? Interesting enough if someone owns one book, but all of them? That's something else. Granted, I'm concentrating on series here, and I've always found those interesting.
The Brown vs. Lewis match was described in detail in a Slate article called Cents and Sensibility two years ago (when it was actually Grishmam vs. Austen).
The author of that piece looked at actual numbers provided by Nielsen Bookscan. Unfortunately, the data she provides is unsufficient to draw any major conclusions, but the assumption that classics start outselling new hits in a relatively short timeframe seems justified.
I've never understand the "Christian Science" in the title of CSM...
What is their viewpoint?
I'm not so sure that LibraryThing exposes any sort of popularity myth. We LT users are a really, really biased sample of the book-buying public - by its nature, LT attracts people who are really into books, kind of obsessive, probably well educated and definitely well read.
For every one person I know in real life whose library resembles most of those catalogued here, I know five or six others who have just one shelf of books that holds The Joy of Cooking, a dictionary, some Reader's Digest condensed books, Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, Clive Cussler, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Steven King and the phone book.
We're not showing what *all* or even *most* people actually own, here.
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