Why Doesn't Sci-Fi Hit the Bestseller Lists?

Pomeranian writes "Sci fi readers often deplore book bestseller lists -- because review editors actively ignore many sci-fi sales, since they don't consider that stuff "popular", even though sci-fi titles often sell in far greater numbers than "serious" highbrow lit. But this all might change soon, with the launch of Bookscan: New technology that tracks actual sales at the cash register with greater precision than ever before. When similar technology launched in the music industry ten years ago, it proved the popularity of "new country" and hip-hop overnight. This story in the Washington Post wonders: Will Bookscan do the same thing to sci-fi? NOTE: this is a *shameless* self-aggrandizing plug, because I wrote the Washington Post story! But I figured it'd be of particular interest to Slashdot readers" CD: While I'd love to see lists that are more reflective of reality, I don't think that a pure unadulterated list is in the interest of the reading public. When I worked at Waldenbooks many moons ago, we would commonly receive copies of one book, Dianetics, from the publisher, with our (And our competitors) sales stickers already on them. While this was an extreme case, it does serve as a cautionary tale about the lengths some will go to manipulate the numbers.

Comments

Still not the whole picture.

[Sir Elton John]

As someone who was to some extent in the "public eye" during the first science fiction boom (a product of the American Cold War with the USSR), I feel the need to point out that tracking books alone does not provide the whole story, as it were.

My experience is limited to music, so I will constrain my comments to that field in what follows.

During that period of high international tension, interest in all things technological skyrocketted (again, no pun intended). While this surely sold paperbacks, the impact on all flavours of popular culture is simply beyond question. In the space of a decade we were given songs such as David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (featuring a main character worthy of Asimov) and movies, including Kubrick's 2001 and, of course, Star Wars. Even ignoring the merchandising that went along with these, the impact on Western culture is incredible.

In essence, science fiction represents more than a shelf or wall at your local book shop. It represents an entire school of thought, an obsession of modern man. It has been bred and inscribed into us from childhood. Counting books sold will never demonstrate the "popularity" of science fiction.

But do you know what will? Taking the hand of a child, standing under the night sky, looking up, and wondering... It's a spirit that lives in all of us, an inquisitiveness that won't be silenced. You can theorise about marketing trends all you want, but it is this essential humanity that will guarantee a market for "sci fi" until the end of time.

Take care, everyone, and keep on dreaming.

In Japan

[Apreche]

I posted this late, so I probably wont get modded up, because people who post early are the only ones who get modded up. But I like to always point out things Japan does right, and has been doing right, that the US has yet to figure out.

I Japan if you buy a book, CD, dvd, anything it has a small paper or cardboard reciept on it. At the point of sale the little slip is tossed into a box. At the end of the day they get a perfectly accurate count of what was sold very easily. If you purchase a cd from somewhere like www.cdjapan.co.jp or buy some imported manga you will probably get this little "recipt" because the people who sold it to you do not count them. It's pretty cool, since they been doing this for a long time.

Gauss

[fferreres]

They don't make it to the bestsellers lists because the human IQ numbers follow the gauss distribution. I could even go to argue that the _really_ best titles sell less that the dumbed down "sci-fi" titles like Neal Stephenson (spelling may be wrong) and the like.

But I think that at least some awards do make a great way to tell what are the good titles.