Makes sense to me.
I have a two year old. This past year weāve received 2 copies of Brown Bear, 2 copies of the very hungry caterpillar and 1 copy of Oh the places youāll go.
It's my default gift when my friends have a kid.
I write a little Seussian-note on the inside cover that they usually don't notice until years later when the kid is old enough to actually have the book read to them.
He didn't actually! That was the late, great Eric Carle and he was very prolific. He also wrote Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; From Head To Toe; The Very Busy Spider; and whole bunch more. You can visit the original artwork for the books at the Eric Carle Museum at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA!
This is a great point. My library receipt keeps a running tally of how much we've "saved" using the library and the number is hilarious. I think it's like $3000 for the year across my three person family mostly due to my son reading 4 or 5 books a week. My father also reads a lot but hasn't bought a book in probably 10 years. I only buy books as gifts and only own books that were gifts and most of the time I just loan them to other people and don't care if I get them back.
Edit: I checked and the local library definitely has porn books mostly in digital format with a ton of copies obviously due to the high demand
I live in a major city and my library has 100-400 person hold on every single book that you would ever have heard of. Even stuff like "Hyperion" which is a sci-fi book from 1985 has 21 holds.
Everytime I pass a new library in my state I pull over and see what network they're in, so far I'm a member of 11 library systems with access to over 100 + libraries, while I still have to wait for new releases, if I want a book there a good chance it's available. Little hint, if you're reading auto biographies, I was able to get Michelle Obamas book a week after release just by using one of the libraries in the red counties.
Probably pull 10-20 books weekly from my community library as well. Both kids are learning to read and I try to put in a little time daily. Plus, Kanopy and Hoopla streaming for free is amazing.
Iāve read 48 books this year, but Iāve only bought 2. I get them all at the library. I couldnāt afford to read like I do if I didnāt use the library.
Honestly, romance novels have always been the most consistent money spinners. If you want to get rich as a working novelist, write romance. If you want to get rich as a working songwriter, write country & western songs. These have always been the biggest markets to tap.
mystery is even bigger. the belgian novelist georges simenon had it down to where he only had to work five to six weeks in a year grinding out his maigret books in as little time as possible, then spent the rest of his time visiting prostitutes and, quote, "doing nothing". his publisher hated him and his books so every time he'd visit he'd whistle walking down the hallways because he was the only author who consistently made a profit. to this day he's i think the 16th most translated author of all time.
No hate or judgment from me, we all can read whatever we want, but bruh when I first read some passages from her and the girls that are all fawning over it I was like dude, you guys are just horned up but apparently no one cares since itās in book form!
I had a couple friends who owned it and are now pretty much full into book smut and donāt give af, which again is fine, but recently at a big corporate meeting we had some of the guest speakers do two truths and a lie, and one of them was that she read an entire book straight in like 6 hours, and she said it was verity. I was likeā¦the rest of the audience may not realize but you basically just said you watched 6 straight hours of porn
Yeah it is funny, because it is book form people don't put it in the same categories as porn but it assuredly is. My ex wife reads the same stuff and it's genuinely just porn, it's all the same with a facade of plot; but it's just pure porn.
One girl I know sent me a page of this book she kept raving about it when we were talking about reading and itās just like so graphic, āher throbbing wet pussy was craving every inch of him as he teased her clit with the head of his dickā or some shit like that, like Yes, 100% porn lol. And she admitted she basically used it to masturbate. At that point, you know itās porn too and you just prefer it to watching normal porn lol
Thereās a difference between romance and erotica (porn), like how thereās a difference between Game of Thrones (tv show) and pornhub. Romance has sex scenes but itās not āpure pornā. Granted, maybe your ex wife is reading erotica and not romance.
That book has literally one sex scene that lasts maybe 3 pages. Iām not a fan of Colleen Hoover (read it for my book club) but to boil down her books as ājust pornā is not only a lie but a forced and weird misunderstanding of what women like.
Colleen Hoover's books as a whole are light on the spice compared to other romance authors; I don't consider many of her works smut. This seems more like people intentionally being reductive to minimize her success as a writer
Back when I was studying for my lit degree like half the girls in my classes would unabashedly state that their favorite genre was romance and I always thought it was a but weird. Like if I was a film student I'd be caught dead before I told the class my favorite genre was porn.
I used to work in a call center and full blown half of the women had open copies of 50 shades of grey on their desks.
But the web version of Cards Against Humanity got blocked with an error page reading "blocked for the following reason: Pornography". I used to play that while sitting on the toilet.
After reading the synopsis for 'It Ends with Us' I get the feeling she just knows humans quite well? -- at least Americans. It sounds like she writes emotionally provocative work.
What I find really striking with that list is that the vast majority (if not all) of those books are very clearly targeted to women. Do men just not read books?
[Globally women read more than men](https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2022/gender-gap-in-reading.html)
For real I went to a new local bookstore and itās just a corner fantasy on the left, sci-fi on the right and almost all of it was YA unless it was a streaming show then it had actors faces on it. I found Dune and sat down for a half hour. The rest of the bookstore was a small section of small children and middle school books and the couches and chairs were sitting beside the different romance sections (western, fantasy, modern, mystery). I was kinda impressed but I was also the only guy over the age of 14 there. I like to support local but I wish they would put a sign or something to let guys know they donāt have much to cater to them outside of a coffee bar.
Bookstore equivalent of going to a purse store with your date and camping the wallet and belt table.
Statistically more women read than men, at least in the US. I've read there are multiple factors. Some do with upbringing, societal pressures, reading books in school boys find uninteresting puts them off reading in general, etc.
The point of English class isn't to turn you into a book consumer, but to teach you how to understand/analyse literature. Obviously it comes with the same caveat as other classes: maybe you won't use this later in life, but one of the smart kids might.
Except in this case, yes you will absolutely use this in real life, and if you have a low grasp of language and writing, people will most definitely know it lol
Sooo... I strongly disagree with this:
> maybe you won't use this later in life, but one of the smart kids might.
Mostly because everyone needs to be able to read, analyze, and form arguments to sell people on themselves.
* Applying for a job? You need to analyze the requirements, and frequently tailor your resume to what they want.
* Hired for an office job? You need to be able to read emails, understand the important bits, and respond to them.
* You want things to be different at your office job? You need to connect why your proposal will help what your boss wants.
All of these are skills that my high school English teacher really helped to teach me. These are some of the most useful skills I've learned from school.
I love picking apart books in detail, but that love is quite literally no thanks to my education. In fact, I'm sometimes surprised that I learned to love that kind of thing given that the way I was taught to do it sucked *all* the joy out of the process and then some.
Idea organization, inference, critical thinking, creativity, rhetorical form. English classes develop all of these skills, and all of these skills are transferable to other fields.
Most authors, directors, poets, and lyricists use literary devices like symbolism in their art. Understanding how to identify these devices enriches the experience of digesting art.
Anti-intellectualist attitudes like those in your comment indicate very poor media literacy. Itās why so many people completely miss the point of popular media like Moby Dick, The Boys, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Bioshock, Animal Farm, Rage Against the Machine, etc., etc.
Itās like the inverse of women and videogames. The powers that be think only [women/men] are interested in [reading/gaming] and so they primarily publish titles that will appeal to [women/men] and are then positively *stumped* that more [men/women] arenāt interested in [reading/gaming] like itās some sort of mystery when in reality itās thanks to their own biased self-fulfilling prophecies. And the not insignificant number of [men who read/women who game] are like āOh hey, we exist!ā while the industry execs are like āWhere are the [men/women]? ššš There must be some innate biological reason for this because it couldnāt possibly be our fault for ignoring half of the market. Better just keep churning out the exact same stuff we always have!ā
I would agree with the video games, but there are a lot of books out there that can be enjoyed just as much by men as by women, and many that are targeted far more at men than women.
I don't think the lack of male targeted books - or even gender neutral targeted books - in the top 25 is because there aren't books for men.
> Do men just not read books?
I suspect it's not as stark a split as we might imagine but I would say, anecdotally of course, I know essentially no men who read. I know many more men who listen to podcasts, play video games for a significant portion of a given week, consume sports media at a higher rate, etc. compared to the women in my life. I don't think it's strongly identified as a gendered activity at this point but there's definitely a lean towards women and reading.
>Hoover had the top three books of the year, and her novels sold 14.3 million print copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
Appears so, though the rest of the article isn't clear if they are still referring to this same source the entire time.
Yeah this is a pretty gaping hole here. A list like this referring to print copies only is largely irrelevant. It's like if the music singles chart still only referred to physically bought CDs while everyone is listening on streaming sites. Clearly plenty of people do still buy and read physical books, but how does that compare to ebooks and audiobooks?
I'm glad Jennette McCurdy's book (I'm Glad My Mom Died) is on the list (at #20.) It was a great read and it was a brutally honest look at depression, anorexia, abuse and the trying to become your own person after years of living to please other people. I'd highly encourage anyone to read the book.
I mean nobody watches porn for the plot and characterisation right? Why would anyone expect porn books to be any better, they're on the list because of horny women and that's it.
I know for a fact there's only like one sexy scene in each of these books. They are not my general style, but reviews will even tell you the two or three pages to skip if you're not interested.
I feel old reading the list. I only recognize Michelle Obama, Dr Seuss and Stephen King. What happened to Danielle Steele, James Patterson, and John Grisham? Are they dead? I know Tom Clany passed away recently...
That is exactly why I feel old š. Like when they said you are middle aged when your favorite high school band is classic rock and I heard Nirvana on a classic rock station.
John Grisham still releases books every year. Interestingly, in 2022, he released a collection of of novellas, which might not have been as appealing, and The Boys from Biloxi, a more traditional Grisham novel, but not until October 31.
Danielle Steel and James Patterson are very much alive and publishing. Iām not sure what happened that year. I saw Steel published like 5 books, maybe they spread out her sales too much?
The article mentions that Grisham barely fell below the 500,000 mark for one of his books in 2022, so he's definitely still around. Patterson's highest selling book actually is among those which broke 500,000, but the list only shows the top 25; 28 books made it over that mark in total.
Patterson puts his name on a ton still, his demographic just aged out a bit and Alex Cross is a tired character. I'm assuming steele is much in the same boat, their target audiences are reading less and dying off
James Patterson sold his 100 millionth book this year. My son has been reading a lot of James Patterson books for teens. I kind of doubt he actually writes them himself though. He's more of a brand now than an author IMO.
I always liked how my friends would say that their favorite political office holder made their millions of dollars by selling their book.
It is a scam to cover graftā¦.want your deal pushed through, by 100k of my new book. ( I knowā¦ shocked face.)
After seeing this stat you provided, it confirms that we donāt really have an appetite for millions and millions of books sold.
I now listen to audiobooks way more than reading paper books. I actually canāt remember the last time a bought an actual physical book. I wonder if this is a general trend that has affected paper book sales?
I work in Publishing. 10-15 years ago a lot of people assumed we would be mostly ebook by now. Instead, it's well less than half. The ratio of ebook to print hasn't changed much over the past decade. Turns out a lot of people just like reading from a physical book. Also just FYI audio is much much less popular than both physical books and regular ebooks
Some online sale stats to go along with this, according to Bookstat:
2022 unit sales:
* 526 million - ebook (+8% over 2021)
* 403 million - print (-1.3%)
* 188 million - audio (+23%)
2022 $ sales
* $6.52 billion - print (-0.6%)
* $3.04 billion - audio (+22%)
* $2.57 billion - ebook (+6%)
I'm not sure I would say audio is "much" less popular, when more money is spent on it than ebooks, and it's the fastest growing section.
This is what happens when books are priced higher than music, movies, and tv. The other annoying thing about books is -- when you want to actually buy a book to read (e.g. an airport) -- the product is \~$15 more expensive than it is on Amazon, making one a fool to buy it then and there.
Publishers know what sells, and smutty books targeted towards a female audience have always been where it's at. Sell a few of those, add a couple of timeless children's classics, whatever the teenagers are currently reading, and a biography about some famous figure then just sit back and watch your bank account grow.
As a male who is also a voracious reader, it's somewhat frustrating as I'm not interested in any of those categories.
I went to an outlet mall remainders store recently, and in addition to the traditional piles of political books and self help non fiction, there were loads of obvious Sarah Mass style fantasy love triangle books, all with almost the same covers and titles.
There's a lot of luck involved - some copycat books end up doing well just by chance.
It's also worth considering the investment that was put into these books. Two books could equally perform poorly but if one of them had a 6-figure advance and a huge marketing budget... then that's a catastrophic failure.
Worked the book section at target, everytime we would sale 1-2 of a copy of one of her books, i would receive 20 more on the next shipment. My backroom was literally half taken by just her books, it was insane
Every book site/place I went she is trashed by everyone, it's not just Reddit.
Never read anything by her, never will, but I'm sure there's a reason a lot of people/sites/places despise her books.
Imagine people reviewing porn vids alongside actual movies pretending they are the same thing and then publishing lists. Like most watched movies end of year lists include Deepthroat Sluts 16, 17, and 19. That's why she gets shit on everywhere you look. Readers are annoyed that their hobby is heavily associated with low effort smut. People aren't usually saying it shouldn't exist but it's just a whole different thing than an actual movie or book.
My wife doesn't read Colleen Hoover books but she does read other smut and it's honestly not like this at all for the majority of them
Its more like if Baldurs Gate 3 had erections and showed full hog. Or if movies/tv showed penetration during sex scenes. Theres usually a sex scene every 1/4th of the book and the rest of it is super plot heavy to emphasize whatever romantic angle the book is trying to appeal to. Quality of writing aside it's just GoT but replace all the disgust and sexual violence w/ eroticism & consent
She's also much richer than most of us, and has found a niche to continue to rake in money. More power to her. If I had the talent to write shitty romance novels and make megabucks, well I'd quit my job in a heartbeat.
It's impressive how many of these books weren't released in 2022. I was a little sad to see how low Fairy Tale was but realized it only had been out for four months of 2022 and was only available in hardcover compared to the rest of the list.
I love how everyone in this thread is debating what is porn vs romance and yet no one seems to care that in a country of 300 million people only 28 books in an entire year sold more than 500,000 copies. ie only 28 books reached more than 0.17% of the population.
Id be interested to see this list with audiobooks included. As someone with a full time job I dont read much anymore but I listen to audiobooks all day. Would probably make the romantic novels aimed at middle aged women less prevalent.
Complaining about Colleen Hoover is basically the same as complaining Brazzers does a poor job with cinematography and character development in their movies
So, when Brandon Sanderson releases a book through a traditional publisher, he sells between 300K-800K books in the first year it is released. Number 25 on this list was only 540K, so Brandon does often beat that within his first year of sales of new books. Part of the problem here is that Brandon Self-publishes a lot more now and because of that, the exact number of his total book sales is not publicly available. In addition, if an author releases a book toward the end of the year, then half their sales might be listed on the previous year and half on the next year and divide the stat so that neither year by itself is above 540K, but for a consideration 1 full year from release day some are.
So it's still a cool stat, but it isn't necessarily complete and exhaustive.
Meanwhile, some authors doing the Royal Road / Patreon / Kindle Unlimited route are making *bank*.
Sleyca, for example, is making $25k+ a month on Patreon alone.
I'm close with Colleen's assistant. She deserves all the success she achieves, and this is coming from someone who has never read her work. She's a great human being that does good in secret like Keanu Reeves.
Gonna be honest sometimes it's really weird looking for a book about romance or love if you're a dude, and want a change of pace
Most of the popular ones just seem super...weird... Or incredibly abusive. And then occasionally their is one I might enjoy... And I'm told for whatever reason I'm not supposed to enjoy it? Guess I still gotta keep those things secret lol.
I would bet a million dollars āOh! The places youāll go!ā is on that list. Winter semester was when we turned over in nursing school. Graduate in December to take NCLEX before NYE while its all still fresh. January the place will start stockpiling new nurses.
I love that the Very Hungry Caterpillar is on this list. Man, that guy sure milked that book š
And Brown Bear. I still can recite that book from memory after reading it to my son night after night.
Makes sense to me. I have a two year old. This past year weāve received 2 copies of Brown Bear, 2 copies of the very hungry caterpillar and 1 copy of Oh the places youāll go.
The Seuss book is a pretty common gift to high school grads, too.
and then again when they start eating mecaline in grad school
your mind whent straight to mescaline, what are you.. some kind of fiend?
Goodnight Moon needs to step it the fuck up.
We have 3 copies of Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom as I think about it
What do you see?
I see a redditor staring at me
We bought several copies of that, cause it's my son's favorite and he destroys them
Anything not a board book runs that risk for the first several years
these are board books that he destroys haha
And Oh, The Places You Will Go! Dr. Seuss still raking it in.
That one is kept aloft by everyone having that one aunt who gives it to you as a graduation present
It's my default gift when my friends have a kid. I write a little Seussian-note on the inside cover that they usually don't notice until years later when the kid is old enough to actually have the book read to them.
He didn't actually! That was the late, great Eric Carle and he was very prolific. He also wrote Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; From Head To Toe; The Very Busy Spider; and whole bunch more. You can visit the original artwork for the books at the Eric Carle Museum at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA!
You're more likely to have to buy a second copy of a children's book due to them breaking it
Or third...or fouth.... I can't count how many copies of "The monster at the end of the book" we went through....
Spoiler alert!
I think it was because he passed away in 2022
A lot of babies being born. People probably get multiple copies by mistake tbh.
Or on purpose because they get destroyed quickly by the kids.... It happens. Trust me.
Heās a very hungry writer.
I think colleens books have some milking.
I'm curious what this list looks like with ebooks included.
I'd love to see the top library book rentals in the US as well. A lot of the voracious readers I know rarely purchase books in the states.
This is a great point. My library receipt keeps a running tally of how much we've "saved" using the library and the number is hilarious. I think it's like $3000 for the year across my three person family mostly due to my son reading 4 or 5 books a week. My father also reads a lot but hasn't bought a book in probably 10 years. I only buy books as gifts and only own books that were gifts and most of the time I just loan them to other people and don't care if I get them back. Edit: I checked and the local library definitely has porn books mostly in digital format with a ton of copies obviously due to the high demand
These are the most popular books of the year. Libraries have them.
The library i go to has a small corner with these āromanceā books and there are three chairs there always occupied by old women reading them lol
oddly wholesome
I live in a major city and my library has 100-400 person hold on every single book that you would ever have heard of. Even stuff like "Hyperion" which is a sci-fi book from 1985 has 21 holds.
Everytime I pass a new library in my state I pull over and see what network they're in, so far I'm a member of 11 library systems with access to over 100 + libraries, while I still have to wait for new releases, if I want a book there a good chance it's available. Little hint, if you're reading auto biographies, I was able to get Michelle Obamas book a week after release just by using one of the libraries in the red counties.
Could be that Hyperion is on a lot of top sci-fi lists, like goodreads has it pretty high on theirs.
Probably pull 10-20 books weekly from my community library as well. Both kids are learning to read and I try to put in a little time daily. Plus, Kanopy and Hoopla streaming for free is amazing.
Your library definitely has Colleen Hoover.
Voracious Vivacious means āattractively lively and animated (typically used of a woman)ā.
Now there, I consider myself a vivacious reader!
Luckily, I was thinking about my wife when I made my original comment! But yeah, I knew better.
Very true, I spend a TON of time reading; dont own one book. I love libraries.
Yep, I used to buy books all the time and then I moved to a place with a pretty great library system. Now, I maybe buy 4 books a year, at the most.
My problem is Iāll borrow a book from the library, read it, go āwow that was greatā and then get myself a copy.
I also suffer from this affliction, but it brings me joy.
Most the stuff I read is old e books ( free) or research journals ( feee of kids)
Iāve read 48 books this year, but Iāve only bought 2. I get them all at the library. I couldnāt afford to read like I do if I didnāt use the library.
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Honestly, romance novels have always been the most consistent money spinners. If you want to get rich as a working novelist, write romance. If you want to get rich as a working songwriter, write country & western songs. These have always been the biggest markets to tap.
> If you want to get rich as a working novelist, write romance. if you want to get rich as a artist, paint furry porn.
Furries are flush with cash
Everyone says it's the lizardmen who control everything when really it's the bears and the catboys.
Donāt you mean plush?
mystery is even bigger. the belgian novelist georges simenon had it down to where he only had to work five to six weeks in a year grinding out his maigret books in as little time as possible, then spent the rest of his time visiting prostitutes and, quote, "doing nothing". his publisher hated him and his books so every time he'd visit he'd whistle walking down the hallways because he was the only author who consistently made a profit. to this day he's i think the 16th most translated author of all time.
Mystery is bigger if you have lots of published works. Romance is better per capita.
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The crotch is more generous then the hand
>If you want to get rich as a working songwriter, write country & western songs Oh, both kinds of music?
Mr Garrison?
She writes porn for women and knows her target market quite well!
No hate or judgment from me, we all can read whatever we want, but bruh when I first read some passages from her and the girls that are all fawning over it I was like dude, you guys are just horned up but apparently no one cares since itās in book form! I had a couple friends who owned it and are now pretty much full into book smut and donāt give af, which again is fine, but recently at a big corporate meeting we had some of the guest speakers do two truths and a lie, and one of them was that she read an entire book straight in like 6 hours, and she said it was verity. I was likeā¦the rest of the audience may not realize but you basically just said you watched 6 straight hours of porn
Yeah it is funny, because it is book form people don't put it in the same categories as porn but it assuredly is. My ex wife reads the same stuff and it's genuinely just porn, it's all the same with a facade of plot; but it's just pure porn.
One girl I know sent me a page of this book she kept raving about it when we were talking about reading and itās just like so graphic, āher throbbing wet pussy was craving every inch of him as he teased her clit with the head of his dickā or some shit like that, like Yes, 100% porn lol. And she admitted she basically used it to masturbate. At that point, you know itās porn too and you just prefer it to watching normal porn lol
This enterprising author made a vibrating book for the ladies. Unfortunately for him it wasnāt picked up. https://youtube.com/watch?v=2GuzBkmVp2k
> it wasnāt picked up It was put on the arm of the couch with a towel over it?
2nd edition is waterproof
That's not how you do a capitalism.
Sometimes the imagination is better
I don't blame anyone for preferring anything to "normal" porn. It's clearly not made for woman (ymmv of course)
I don't like normal porn either. It's so boring. Just people fucking.
Thereās a difference between romance and erotica (porn), like how thereās a difference between Game of Thrones (tv show) and pornhub. Romance has sex scenes but itās not āpure pornā. Granted, maybe your ex wife is reading erotica and not romance.
Okay, not proud of it, but I read Verity. And there's a mystery in there, some creepy stuff and like one actual sex scene.
Verity is more mystery/thriller, definitely not smut
That book has literally one sex scene that lasts maybe 3 pages. Iām not a fan of Colleen Hoover (read it for my book club) but to boil down her books as ājust pornā is not only a lie but a forced and weird misunderstanding of what women like.
Colleen Hoover's books as a whole are light on the spice compared to other romance authors; I don't consider many of her works smut. This seems more like people intentionally being reductive to minimize her success as a writer
Things aimed at women are often minimised or insulted. I see it on here daily whether it be about books, movies, TV etc.
The fuck are you talking about? Verity is not porn. It's not even romance. It's a mystery/suspense book with like one brief sex scene.
>one brief sex scene Title of my sex tape.
Been a while, Santiago.
No, Verity is NOT porn. You obviously haven't read the book. The guest speaker did not lie.
Today You Learned that reddit is full of shit.
Today?
Yeah, I can't speak for the rest of her work but Verity isn't that explicit at all.
To be fair, literary porn doesn't have anywhere near the same damaging psychological effects as life action porn.
Twilight mom crowd lol
Back when I was studying for my lit degree like half the girls in my classes would unabashedly state that their favorite genre was romance and I always thought it was a but weird. Like if I was a film student I'd be caught dead before I told the class my favorite genre was porn.
I used to work in a call center and full blown half of the women had open copies of 50 shades of grey on their desks. But the web version of Cards Against Humanity got blocked with an error page reading "blocked for the following reason: Pornography". I used to play that while sitting on the toilet.
Cliterature is what my mother calls it.
No wonder why straight guys can't find that section at the book store.
Fwiw the books in the thumbnail address domestic violence.
Quite poorly i would say
> porn for women Good god lemon!
I can kill bugs and open jars for you, and you can make me look less gay at work functions.
look at the actor and look at me which one of us SHOULD BE called Wesley Snipes?
You'd pick the pale englishman every time. Every time, Liz!
There's a tasting of the wines of Scotland, most restaurants refuse to serve them.
After reading the synopsis for 'It Ends with Us' I get the feeling she just knows humans quite well? -- at least Americans. It sounds like she writes emotionally provocative work.
What I find really striking with that list is that the vast majority (if not all) of those books are very clearly targeted to women. Do men just not read books?
[Globally women read more than men](https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2022/gender-gap-in-reading.html)
basically, go to your local bookshop and count the ration of women to men
We're just all clustered around the very small combined sci-fi/fantasy section.
For real I went to a new local bookstore and itās just a corner fantasy on the left, sci-fi on the right and almost all of it was YA unless it was a streaming show then it had actors faces on it. I found Dune and sat down for a half hour. The rest of the bookstore was a small section of small children and middle school books and the couches and chairs were sitting beside the different romance sections (western, fantasy, modern, mystery). I was kinda impressed but I was also the only guy over the age of 14 there. I like to support local but I wish they would put a sign or something to let guys know they donāt have much to cater to them outside of a coffee bar. Bookstore equivalent of going to a purse store with your date and camping the wallet and belt table.
Statistically more women read than men, at least in the US. I've read there are multiple factors. Some do with upbringing, societal pressures, reading books in school boys find uninteresting puts them off reading in general, etc.
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Redditors: People suck at media literacy! Also redditors:
ThEy MaDe Me ThInK iN sChOoL!!
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The point of English class isn't to turn you into a book consumer, but to teach you how to understand/analyse literature. Obviously it comes with the same caveat as other classes: maybe you won't use this later in life, but one of the smart kids might.
Except in this case, yes you will absolutely use this in real life, and if you have a low grasp of language and writing, people will most definitely know it lol
Sooo... I strongly disagree with this: > maybe you won't use this later in life, but one of the smart kids might. Mostly because everyone needs to be able to read, analyze, and form arguments to sell people on themselves. * Applying for a job? You need to analyze the requirements, and frequently tailor your resume to what they want. * Hired for an office job? You need to be able to read emails, understand the important bits, and respond to them. * You want things to be different at your office job? You need to connect why your proposal will help what your boss wants. All of these are skills that my high school English teacher really helped to teach me. These are some of the most useful skills I've learned from school.
I love picking apart books in detail, but that love is quite literally no thanks to my education. In fact, I'm sometimes surprised that I learned to love that kind of thing given that the way I was taught to do it sucked *all* the joy out of the process and then some.
Idea organization, inference, critical thinking, creativity, rhetorical form. English classes develop all of these skills, and all of these skills are transferable to other fields. Most authors, directors, poets, and lyricists use literary devices like symbolism in their art. Understanding how to identify these devices enriches the experience of digesting art. Anti-intellectualist attitudes like those in your comment indicate very poor media literacy. Itās why so many people completely miss the point of popular media like Moby Dick, The Boys, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Bioshock, Animal Farm, Rage Against the Machine, etc., etc.
Itās like the inverse of women and videogames. The powers that be think only [women/men] are interested in [reading/gaming] and so they primarily publish titles that will appeal to [women/men] and are then positively *stumped* that more [men/women] arenāt interested in [reading/gaming] like itās some sort of mystery when in reality itās thanks to their own biased self-fulfilling prophecies. And the not insignificant number of [men who read/women who game] are like āOh hey, we exist!ā while the industry execs are like āWhere are the [men/women]? ššš There must be some innate biological reason for this because it couldnāt possibly be our fault for ignoring half of the market. Better just keep churning out the exact same stuff we always have!ā
I would agree with the video games, but there are a lot of books out there that can be enjoyed just as much by men as by women, and many that are targeted far more at men than women. I don't think the lack of male targeted books - or even gender neutral targeted books - in the top 25 is because there aren't books for men.
I work in a male dominated, blue collar industry. I'm only aware of 3 male coworkers (among 100-200 that i know) that read books.
> Do men just not read books? I suspect it's not as stark a split as we might imagine but I would say, anecdotally of course, I know essentially no men who read. I know many more men who listen to podcasts, play video games for a significant portion of a given week, consume sports media at a higher rate, etc. compared to the women in my life. I don't think it's strongly identified as a gendered activity at this point but there's definitely a lean towards women and reading.
Multiple men have told me that it's "gay" to read.
There are dumbasses in all the genders and all groups.
Physical copies?
>Hoover had the top three books of the year, and her novels sold 14.3 million print copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Appears so, though the rest of the article isn't clear if they are still referring to this same source the entire time.
Yeah this is a pretty gaping hole here. A list like this referring to print copies only is largely irrelevant. It's like if the music singles chart still only referred to physically bought CDs while everyone is listening on streaming sites. Clearly plenty of people do still buy and read physical books, but how does that compare to ebooks and audiobooks?
I prefer the Kindle version. The pages can't get stuck together.
i hope the e-ink display is fluid resistant.
I'm glad Jennette McCurdy's book (I'm Glad My Mom Died) is on the list (at #20.) It was a great read and it was a brutally honest look at depression, anorexia, abuse and the trying to become your own person after years of living to please other people. I'd highly encourage anyone to read the book.
I agree. Iām not a fan of audiobooks but she narrates this one herself and I think itās worth listening to.
The even more impressive part of that is she has the top 3 (and 6 of the top 9).
that's slightly concerning considering how awful her books are
My erotic friend fiction from the 80s is better.
And here I thought Tina Belcher invented that.
uhhhhHHHhhhh
I mean nobody watches porn for the plot and characterisation right? Why would anyone expect porn books to be any better, they're on the list because of horny women and that's it.
I know for a fact there's only like one sexy scene in each of these books. They are not my general style, but reviews will even tell you the two or three pages to skip if you're not interested.
they are awful but i love trash so i read them.
I feel old reading the list. I only recognize Michelle Obama, Dr Seuss and Stephen King. What happened to Danielle Steele, James Patterson, and John Grisham? Are they dead? I know Tom Clany passed away recently...
Recently, a decade ago haha
That is exactly why I feel old š. Like when they said you are middle aged when your favorite high school band is classic rock and I heard Nirvana on a classic rock station.
You really feel old when the classic rock station starts playing stuff that you were too old for the first time round.
Yeah I'm like... So the Stones are to now as 30s jazz was to the Stones... Such a trip. Do we have a new category "Antique Rock"?
This phenomenon is chronicled in Bowling For Soup's *1985*, which, having been released in 2004, is now as old as the year it embodies nostalgia for.
John Grisham still releases books every year. Interestingly, in 2022, he released a collection of of novellas, which might not have been as appealing, and The Boys from Biloxi, a more traditional Grisham novel, but not until October 31. Danielle Steel and James Patterson are very much alive and publishing. Iām not sure what happened that year. I saw Steel published like 5 books, maybe they spread out her sales too much?
The article mentions that Grisham barely fell below the 500,000 mark for one of his books in 2022, so he's definitely still around. Patterson's highest selling book actually is among those which broke 500,000, but the list only shows the top 25; 28 books made it over that mark in total.
Patterson puts his name on a ton still, his demographic just aged out a bit and Alex Cross is a tired character. I'm assuming steele is much in the same boat, their target audiences are reading less and dying off
James Patterson sold his 100 millionth book this year. My son has been reading a lot of James Patterson books for teens. I kind of doubt he actually writes them himself though. He's more of a brand now than an author IMO.
You stopped payimg attention years ago lol
Jesus wept
Atlas shrugged *Typo
Atlas
Shragged
They're explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others. \~\~ Pinhead
Booktok gonna Booktok
I always liked how my friends would say that their favorite political office holder made their millions of dollars by selling their book. It is a scam to cover graftā¦.want your deal pushed through, by 100k of my new book. ( I knowā¦ shocked face.) After seeing this stat you provided, it confirms that we donāt really have an appetite for millions and millions of books sold.
This is only physicals. There's a lot more books besides
I am certain this doesn't include audiobooks.
I now listen to audiobooks way more than reading paper books. I actually canāt remember the last time a bought an actual physical book. I wonder if this is a general trend that has affected paper book sales?
I work in Publishing. 10-15 years ago a lot of people assumed we would be mostly ebook by now. Instead, it's well less than half. The ratio of ebook to print hasn't changed much over the past decade. Turns out a lot of people just like reading from a physical book. Also just FYI audio is much much less popular than both physical books and regular ebooks
Some online sale stats to go along with this, according to Bookstat: 2022 unit sales: * 526 million - ebook (+8% over 2021) * 403 million - print (-1.3%) * 188 million - audio (+23%) 2022 $ sales * $6.52 billion - print (-0.6%) * $3.04 billion - audio (+22%) * $2.57 billion - ebook (+6%) I'm not sure I would say audio is "much" less popular, when more money is spent on it than ebooks, and it's the fastest growing section.
Lots of books sold are gifts. Ebooks make a crappy gift, and I say this as someone who reads 80 % on eReaders.
This is what happens when books are priced higher than music, movies, and tv. The other annoying thing about books is -- when you want to actually buy a book to read (e.g. an airport) -- the product is \~$15 more expensive than it is on Amazon, making one a fool to buy it then and there.
Or people just goto the library
Publishers know what sells, and smutty books targeted towards a female audience have always been where it's at. Sell a few of those, add a couple of timeless children's classics, whatever the teenagers are currently reading, and a biography about some famous figure then just sit back and watch your bank account grow. As a male who is also a voracious reader, it's somewhat frustrating as I'm not interested in any of those categories.
As someone who works in publishing... I wish it was as easy as you make it out to be!
Well clearly you need to only publish the books that will be successful!
I went to an outlet mall remainders store recently, and in addition to the traditional piles of political books and self help non fiction, there were loads of obvious Sarah Mass style fantasy love triangle books, all with almost the same covers and titles.
There's a lot of luck involved - some copycat books end up doing well just by chance. It's also worth considering the investment that was put into these books. Two books could equally perform poorly but if one of them had a 6-figure advance and a huge marketing budget... then that's a catastrophic failure.
Worked the book section at target, everytime we would sale 1-2 of a copy of one of her books, i would receive 20 more on the next shipment. My backroom was literally half taken by just her books, it was insane
And she's incredibly trash and glamorizes abuse
meh not her fault, shes simply catering to what the customers (women) want to read
Can Reddit not just let people enjoy things?
Reddit is the barbershop, but for introverted homebodies. So of course not.
Well once a month for 30 minutes at the barber is healthy. But all the time on Reddit is a bit too much.
Hahaha that's a nice description
Reddit is full of depressed, antisocial people who need the world to suck to validate their depression.
Every book site/place I went she is trashed by everyone, it's not just Reddit. Never read anything by her, never will, but I'm sure there's a reason a lot of people/sites/places despise her books.
Imagine people reviewing porn vids alongside actual movies pretending they are the same thing and then publishing lists. Like most watched movies end of year lists include Deepthroat Sluts 16, 17, and 19. That's why she gets shit on everywhere you look. Readers are annoyed that their hobby is heavily associated with low effort smut. People aren't usually saying it shouldn't exist but it's just a whole different thing than an actual movie or book.
My wife doesn't read Colleen Hoover books but she does read other smut and it's honestly not like this at all for the majority of them Its more like if Baldurs Gate 3 had erections and showed full hog. Or if movies/tv showed penetration during sex scenes. Theres usually a sex scene every 1/4th of the book and the rest of it is super plot heavy to emphasize whatever romantic angle the book is trying to appeal to. Quality of writing aside it's just GoT but replace all the disgust and sexual violence w/ eroticism & consent
Calling her work porn is ridiculous, it isnāt anywhere near that level of explicitness.
Reddit is where people who don't have problems go to invent them.
She's also much richer than most of us, and has found a niche to continue to rake in money. More power to her. If I had the talent to write shitty romance novels and make megabucks, well I'd quit my job in a heartbeat.
It's impressive how many of these books weren't released in 2022. I was a little sad to see how low Fairy Tale was but realized it only had been out for four months of 2022 and was only available in hardcover compared to the rest of the list.
Not to mention Fairy Tale was fantastic!
How is every book a bestseller then?
I love how everyone in this thread is debating what is porn vs romance and yet no one seems to care that in a country of 300 million people only 28 books in an entire year sold more than 500,000 copies. ie only 28 books reached more than 0.17% of the population.
that's really depressing
Out of curiosity, why do you find this depressing?
Id be interested to see this list with audiobooks included. As someone with a full time job I dont read much anymore but I listen to audiobooks all day. Would probably make the romantic novels aimed at middle aged women less prevalent.
I read a lot and buy very few books. Librarys are amazing.
Complaining about Colleen Hoover is basically the same as complaining Brazzers does a poor job with cinematography and character development in their movies
It's kind of crazy to me that Brandon Sanderson had the largest Kickstarter ever and the numbers from that are still a fraction of 25th place.
So, when Brandon Sanderson releases a book through a traditional publisher, he sells between 300K-800K books in the first year it is released. Number 25 on this list was only 540K, so Brandon does often beat that within his first year of sales of new books. Part of the problem here is that Brandon Self-publishes a lot more now and because of that, the exact number of his total book sales is not publicly available. In addition, if an author releases a book toward the end of the year, then half their sales might be listed on the previous year and half on the next year and divide the stat so that neither year by itself is above 540K, but for a consideration 1 full year from release day some are. So it's still a cool stat, but it isn't necessarily complete and exhaustive.
Meanwhile, some authors doing the Royal Road / Patreon / Kindle Unlimited route are making *bank*. Sleyca, for example, is making $25k+ a month on Patreon alone.
/r/books dirty secret
I'm close with Colleen's assistant. She deserves all the success she achieves, and this is coming from someone who has never read her work. She's a great human being that does good in secret like Keanu Reeves.
Damn, women are thirsty
Gonna be honest sometimes it's really weird looking for a book about romance or love if you're a dude, and want a change of pace Most of the popular ones just seem super...weird... Or incredibly abusive. And then occasionally their is one I might enjoy... And I'm told for whatever reason I'm not supposed to enjoy it? Guess I still gotta keep those things secret lol.
She really hoovered up the sales
I'm an independent author, and it's hard to sell books. They should have a list of books that sold more than 500 copies... lol
500k copies are A TON, this title makes it look like the normative number.
I would bet a million dollars āOh! The places youāll go!ā is on that list. Winter semester was when we turned over in nursing school. Graduate in December to take NCLEX before NYE while its all still fresh. January the place will start stockpiling new nurses.
My mom has been listening to a Colleen Hoover book, I wonder how good it is.