millionsmillions: Amazon created an “Election Heat Map” to tally the number of “red” and “blue” books sold across the nation, and the count is updated hourly. The results are somewhat surprising to those who believe liberals read more than conservatives. (Perhaps liberals frequent more independent bookstores?) At the time of this writing, “red” books are favored by a margin of 7%. That’s mildly disturbing… I suppose… But how many of these books are actually read and aren’t just bought because they maybe look interesting but then end up sitting by someone’s bed forever or maybe they read the first few pages, fall asleep, then never pick it up again because falling asleep after only the first few pages of a book seems like a bad sign? And Amazon can’t really track ALL “blue” and “red” books sold out there, given they don’t own every single source of literature known to man, so sure Amazon has a lot of conservative customers but what if other sources of literary content such as Barnes & Nobles were to do such a thing? What would we see then? And what exactly makes a book “blue” or “red”? I mean, sure if it’s about politics and it holds a specifically left or right view on matters, then that’d make sense, but say someone who writes generally Liberal-leaning political books (for some reason) decides to write a children’s book about a cat, does that cat suddenly get tagged up there with books about the need for Education reform and a biased biography of a former president or…?  In short… I ask: What is the point in this and why do we care?
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millionsmillions:

Amazon created an “Election Heat Map” to tally the number of “red” and “blue” books sold across the nation, and the count is updated hourly. The results are somewhat surprising to those who believe liberals read more than conservatives. (Perhaps liberals frequent more independent bookstores?) At the time of this writing, “red” books are favored by a margin of 7%.

That’s mildly disturbing… I suppose…

But how many of these books are actually read and aren’t just bought because they maybe look interesting but then end up sitting by someone’s bed forever or maybe they read the first few pages, fall asleep, then never pick it up again because falling asleep after only the first few pages of a book seems like a bad sign?

And Amazon can’t really track ALL “blue” and “red” books sold out there, given they don’t own every single source of literature known to man, so sure Amazon has a lot of conservative customers but what if other sources of literary content such as Barnes & Nobles were to do such a thing? What would we see then?

And what exactly makes a book “blue” or “red”? I mean, sure if it’s about politics and it holds a specifically left or right view on matters, then that’d make sense, but say someone who writes generally Liberal-leaning political books (for some reason) decides to write a children’s book about a cat, does that cat suddenly get tagged up there with books about the need for Education reform and a biased biography of a former president or…? 

In short… I ask: What is the point in this and why do we care?