I think sometimes, I spend more time looking for books to read than actually reading them. This led me to dig up a little feature on my Amazon.com account title “Amazon Charts”
Amazon Charts is built on a simple concept and now with the technology of ebook readers and apps, Amazon can actually track what is being read. As you could imagine, there is a difference between what is bought and what is being read. I have plenty of books in my library, but many of them have not been read. I want to read them one day, but I just haven’t made it to them yet. However, there are books that were so captivating that I dropped everything to read.
This distinction is important. To me it is more important when looking at Nonfiction books rather than Fiction books because of the influence level, but fiction still has its place. In our culture, there are books that come along and begin to influence society. People begin reading them and quoting them. These books begin to shape the dialogue that is happening around us. These are the books that are actually being read. This is why this index is critical to understand. In the past, our only way of determining this influence was by best seller lists. Now, we have a separate list that identifies what is being read and, therefore, directly impacting the world right now.
I was excited to find this feature on Amazon.com. It is important to note that religious texts, daily devotionals, dictionaries, and encyclopedias are not included in this index. I agree, that these would make the list less effective. It would be interesting to see which religious text, devotionals, dictionaries, and encyclopedias are being read, but for the sake of this “Most Read” vs “Most Sold” chart it is good to see which books are influencing our world.