I had a recent discussion with someone about the importance of critical thinking. We agreed that students need to learn how to assess reported events; I argued that people should be taught logic, while they argued that students should be taught statistics.
I disagreed strongly, but only after consideration did I hit upon why. The argument for statistic teaching was to demonstrate that the truth is mutable, that statistics can be used to prove anything. I’ve heard that assertion before, usually from people who have taken at least one statistics class. The problem is that the statement is completely and demonstrably wrong, and just goes to underline the problem we have with critical thought today. Statistics can only be used to shade the truth when people don’t examine the reporting. The resultant belief that statistics can be used to prove anything is the opposite of the lesson which should be learned. That lesson is this: if you question everything and apply logical reasoning skills to the statements you hear, it becomes more difficult for people to casually deceive you.
That led to thoughts on the quandry of declining readership. I don’t know if it’s truth or myth; what I do know is that the arguments that I’ve seen are often based on false data.
You want to talk about whether readers are dying away or not? The questions are whether or not a truly representative sample of the population was polled, and what they were asked. Sometimes I’ve seen a reasonable, straightforward question: how many books did you read last year? More often I’ve seen sales figures, primarily declining sales figures, used as a yardstick.
When you use book sales as the gauge of whether or not people are reading, you discount a few facts. First is the existence of second-hand book sales. I have lived in two areas of New Jersey, Florida, upstate New York, Virginia, and Texas. I have visited conventions all over the country. I do not remember ever being out of driving distance of a used book store. Second is the fact that a large percentage of readers grew up in households where at least one parent read for pleasure. What that means is that during a significant portion of the young reader’s life, there are already books around the house, acquired by parents, which will be read by another person without generating a single new sale. Third is the tendency for casual readers to pass books along to friends. I have long ago lost count of the number of books I’ve given to or received from others. All of these are ignored if you use book sales as a method of charting rising or declining readership.
For that reason, I don’t think it’s a valid measurement.
I also question the common view that horror is a declining genre. I question, in part, because of the secondhand bookstores. While the horror section is in decline in the chain bookstores, either dramatically shrunken or incorporated into general literature, a trip to the nearest used bookstore will invariably reveal a horror section of a respectable size, often approximately half of the size of the sf/fantasy section. A used bookstore is like any other bookstore: it will allocate space in accordance with what sells. A reasonable question would be why horror sells in used bookstores, but has trouble generating a similar sales record in new bookstores.
I can posit a few guesses: the demographic for horror readership might trend toward the younger reader, who is more likely to be tightly budgeting their money and therefore more likely to purchase used books. Or the readership might, as a general rule, only recognize and follow a select few names in the field while relegating everyone else to a massed group of “others”; in that case, what would matter most would be a general plot outline, and there is little reason to wait for the new vampire book to be released if there are already thirty good ones available at the second-hand store. Or, hell, it might just be that those weird shiny/die-cut/hologram/skeleton covers of the 1980s were actually appealling to the average horror reader. Or the net readership might actually be in decline, but not at the level indicated by the new sales figures. I don’t know. Pretending I did without having any data available would be exactly the type of thing that I’ve been railing about.
But I don’t have to pretend to know the answer in order to ask the question. And I suspect that answering that question correctly could be the first step in reversing the trend for new sales.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Dave Wilson
I’ve often wondered about that, Bill. For instance, when B&N reports a decline in sales, I’d like to see if there’s a corresponding rise in sales at their online site…or whether that slack picked up in the profit over at Amazon, which seems to grow with leaps and bounds…
On eBay right now there are 469976 books for sale. There are so many completed in the last 30 or 60 days (whichever it is that completed items shows) that it won’t even list them unless you narrow your search.
There are a lot of libraries…people use them. Are library book sales up, or down? Is that figure based on readers, or just on budgetary constraints?
The problem with most truly useful statistics is that almost everyone who might put them together and use them has an agenda, and that agenda is kept in mind when they organize their report…
Makes one think, to be certain.
D
Feb 11th, 2008
Thomas Sullivan
Figures lie and liars figure. Right on with your stats evalution, Bill. As a former teacher my life experience has similarly confirmed the need for applied logic among the young and vacuous. Related skills are also sorely lacking, perhaps because of the passive lifestyle — spectatorship — so easy to evolve into these days. One of the things I noticed in all those classroom years was the declining ability to make inferences, as if students were waiting to be told what to think, aka too much time watching non-interactive media.
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Feb 11th, 2008
eric wilson
Oh, you’ve hit on one of my biggest frustrations with our education system. My daughters (both teens) have even been encouraged NOT to disrupt a teacher’s lesson with challenging questions. Just learn the info. Pass the test. Move up a grade…That seems to be the emphasis.
Like you’ve pointed out, stats can be twisted to mean anything. A poll can be tweaked with the changing of a word to elicit a certain response. A bar graph can be made more dramatic by changing the parameters.
Critical thinking. My dad taught it to me. I’m teaching it to my kids.
But who’s teaching it to the school system?
As for book sales, that’s an interesting twist on the whole subject. The 120 Amazon reviews of my five novels cannot represent all the readers. My mediocre sales are a poor reflection, as well. When I check my local library system, there are usually 10-15 copies of my books checked out at any given time. So what’s the real gauge? I have no idea.
Feb 11th, 2008
Brian Hodge
Bill, I’d been hoping you’d add something to this topic, either from the viewpoint of a bookseller, or just a more analytical perspective. Great points, all.
While doing my piece for the other day, I was thinking the same thing about used bookstores: that they alone comprise a major component of overall sales figures, but one that likely isn’t being factored in.
One minuscule case in point: I love Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, wouldn’t dream of missing an installment. But I can’t remember the last time I bought one new. Anymore, I’m thinking: An $8 list price for a paperback I’ll read in 2 days, when I can get a pristine copy for half that or less, or off my trade-in credit?
Something like must be going on tens of millions of times per year, but it’s largely invisible to industry studies.
It also makes me wonder about pricing’s effect upon perceived value … at what point a new book’s price is regarded as just too high for what one is getting.
I’m crudely ignoring quality here, as well as a reader’s attachment to a particular author, and thinking of a book solely as a commodity. But still, I’m curious about how readers go about weighing their way through this kind of mental conversation: “No, I can’t see paying $8 for this short book padded out with lots of white space … but this thick one with smaller type and skinny margins, yeah, that could be worth it, because it looks like something I could really get lost in.”
Feb 11th, 2008
Fiona
The saying goes,
“There are lies, damn lies and statistical lies.”
Feb 11th, 2008
Janet Berliner
Good topic.
Wish we could get residuals from secondhand book sales and library loans, MR. Hodges. Sure would make it easier to pay our bills.
–Janet
Feb 11th, 2008
Dave Wilson
There is also the fact that a lot of books end up on that secondary market NEW because places like Walmart order a BILLION so they can over-discount, and then remainder most of it…feh.
D
Feb 11th, 2008
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