The most popular…
I was proud of myself when I got over my tendency to condemn things that were popular. Look, I know I like a lot of things that aren’t popular…my Significant Other got me this great t-shirt that says, “Nobody’s Target Market”. 😉 However, I realized that it was as silly for me to exclude something because it was popular as it was for others to exclude it because it wasn’t.
Sure, I could assume that anything which is super popular has been…homogenized in some way, that is must have had challenging or controversial elements removed. However, I think it will also generally have some value that appeals to a lot of people. I’m interested in people, and what they like and how they think…and that includes pop culture.
So, for fun, I thought I’d look at some of the most popular items in the (USA) Kindle store.
Amazon updates these every hour, so it may be different by the time you see it. It’s also possible for people to game they system, by buying a bunch of copies of a particular book in an hour, just to push it to the top.
I still think you’ll find this interesting…
As usual, I won’t intentionally link to books which block text-to-speech access*.
Oh, and this is important: typically, the publishers decide on the categories themselves, and that is often done for marketing reasons. I’ve seen the same book categorized as both fiction and non-fiction, for example.
Most popular biography:
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom: 1940-1945
Most popular non-fiction children’s book about animals:
Dinosaurs: Amazing Pictures & Fun Facts on Animals in Nature (Our Amazing World Series)
Most popular book about puppets & puppetry:
Puppet Planet: The Most Amazing Puppet-Making Book in the Universe
Most popular book about physics:
The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939-1949
Most popular book about popular dance:
Most popular time travel romance:
Rowena Through the Wall: Expanded Edition (Land’s End – book #1)
Most popular book on heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning:
HVAC Instant Answers (Instant Answer Series)
Most popular South American newspaper:
Most popular book on skateboarding:
Most popular book on finance:
The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader
Enjoy!
* A Kindle with text-to-speech can read any text downloaded to it…unless that access is blocked by the publisher inserting code into the file to prevent it. That’s why you can have the device read personal documents to you (I’ve done that). I believe that this sort of access blocking disproportionately disadvantages the disabled, although I also believe it is legal (provided that there is at least one accessible version of each e-book available, however, that one can require a certification of disability). For that reason, I don’t deliberately link to books which block TTS access here (although it may happen accidentally, particularly if the access is blocked after I’ve linked it). I do believe this is a personal decision, and there are legitimate arguments for purchasing those books.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 