This weekend's edition of The Wall Street Journal included their annual Books of the Year lists. Broken down into fiction and nonfiction categories, each list contains 10 titles. There is also a separate list for business books. The back page of this special section contains best-selling books for week ended December 9th.
There are a few things I found interesting about this section. The first is that I never seem to read any of these popular titles. The only one that appears on the best-selling list that we even own is Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney. Is it the same for you or do you end up reading a lot of popular books each year?
The best-selling books lists include e-books. Should this surprise me? No, but it does a bit. I didn't grow up with e-books. Even my girls (11 and 9) prefer to read a printed book over one off my Kindle, though I've never attempted to persuade them toward liking one over the other. My youngest probably enjoys e-books the most. Kids in her school (2nd and 3rd graders only) still prefer to read printed, but upon occasion you'll see an electronic device in the classroom. Their inclusion on the lists reminds us that publishing is changing.
As a writer, these lists are also discouraging in a way. Well-known names fill them: Bill O'Reilly, James Patterson, Tom Clancy, and Janet Evanovich to name a few. Where does that leave room for the rest of us? Is it any wonder self-publishing and e-books have taken off the way they have? How many of us have built-in platforms like O'Reilly? How long does an author wait to find representation and have a real shot at making the lists?
I'm going to save this special Books section and see if I can make time to read at least a few books from the lists.
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