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I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:42 am
by Spock
read Kipling's "The Light that Failed" in 2022?
I read this book (Kipling's first novel) a few months ago and I remember wondering if anybody else in the world was reading that book at the same time or even within a few months of me reading it.
There can't be very many-maybe some Kipling scholars or Kipling completists-the few of which exist in this day and age.
So the upshot is that I would be very surprised if more than a handful of people (if that) read it in 2022.
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:56 pm
by silverscreenselect
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:42 am
So the upshot is that I would be very surprised if more than a handful of people (if that) read it in 2022.
The Light That Failed is in the public domain, which means that it's freely downloadable and available online at several online depositaries. It's also available for sale in physical form on Amazon and other places. The book has been downloaded 152 times from Project Gutenberg in the last 30 days. The most popular free Amazon version of the book ranks about 14,000 in "sales" among free books. I don't know what that translates to in terms of the actual number of copies downloaded, but Moby Dick ranks in the 4,000s.
The most popular version of the paperback book on Amazon ranks 494,000 in sales. That translates to about 10 sales per month at $6.99.
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:34 pm
by Spock
silverscreenselect wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:56 pm
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:42 am
So the upshot is that I would be very surprised if more than a handful of people (if that) read it in 2022.
The Light That Failed is in the public domain, which means that it's freely downloadable and available online at several online depositaries. It's also available for sale in physical form on Amazon and other places. The book has been downloaded 152 times from Project Gutenberg in the last 30 days. The most popular free Amazon version of the book ranks about 14,000 in "sales" among free books. I don't know what that translates to in terms of the actual number of copies downloaded, but Moby Dick ranks in the 4,000s.
The most popular version of the paperback book on Amazon ranks 494,000 in sales. That translates to about 10 sales per month at $6.99.
Interesting-how does that compare to "Kim" which is likely his best known novel?
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:51 pm
by Bob Juch
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:34 pm
silverscreenselect wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:56 pm
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:42 am
So the upshot is that I would be very surprised if more than a handful of people (if that) read it in 2022.
The Light That Failed is in the public domain, which means that it's freely downloadable and available online at several online depositaries. It's also available for sale in physical form on Amazon and other places. The book has been downloaded 152 times from Project Gutenberg in the last 30 days. The most popular free Amazon version of the book ranks about 14,000 in "sales" among free books. I don't know what that translates to in terms of the actual number of copies downloaded, but Moby Dick ranks in the 4,000s.
The most popular version of the paperback book on Amazon ranks 494,000 in sales. That translates to about 10 sales per month at $6.99.
Interesting-how does that compare to "Kim" which is likely his best known novel?
Kim?! No, it's "The Jungle Book." "Just So Stories" is probably up there too.
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:39 pm
by Spock
Bob Juch wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:51 pm
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:34 pm
silverscreenselect wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:56 pm
The Light That Failed is in the public domain, which means that it's freely downloadable and available online at several online depositaries. It's also available for sale in physical form on Amazon and other places. The book has been downloaded 152 times from Project Gutenberg in the last 30 days. The most popular free Amazon version of the book ranks about 14,000 in "sales" among free books. I don't know what that translates to in terms of the actual number of copies downloaded, but Moby Dick ranks in the 4,000s.
The most popular version of the paperback book on Amazon ranks 494,000 in sales. That translates to about 10 sales per month at $6.99.
Interesting-how does that compare to "Kim" which is likely his best known novel?
Kim?! No, it's "The Jungle Book." "Just So Stories" is probably up there too.
I would describe those works as collections of short stories and not as novels.
It has been a few years now, but I remember how surprised I was when I read The Jungle Book(s) at how far ranging they were and how many of the stories had nothing to do with Mowgli and Company.
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:44 pm
by silverscreenselect
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:34 pm
Interesting-how does that compare to "Kim" which is likely his best known novel?
The most popular free version of Kim on Amazon ranks about 1,300 among free books on Amazon.
The most popular Kipling book on Project Gutenberg is The Jungle Book. One version of that book has 7567 downloads in 30 days, and the next most popular has 1164. The most popular version of Kim has 1006 downloads and the next most popular has 150. I don't know what the differences are among the various versions.
The most popular "book" on Project Gutenberg over the last 30 days is Romeo and Juliet with over 166,000 downloads, followed by A Room with a View 145,000, Middlemarch with 142,000, Moby Dick with 135,000 and Little Women with 133,000. As with the Kipling books, there may be other versions of these works on Project Gutenberg with fewer downloads.
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:29 am
by Spock
silverscreenselect wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:44 pm
Spock wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:34 pm
Interesting-how does that compare to "Kim" which is likely his best known novel?
The most popular free version of Kim on Amazon ranks about 1,300 among free books on Amazon.
The most popular Kipling book on Project Gutenberg is The Jungle Book. One version of that book has 7567 downloads in 30 days, and the next most popular has 1164. The most popular version of Kim has 1006 downloads and the next most popular has 150. I don't know what the differences are among the various versions.
The most popular "book" on Project Gutenberg over the last 30 days is Romeo and Juliet with over 166,000 downloads, followed by A Room with a View 145,000, Middlemarch with 142,000, Moby Dick with 135,000 and Little Women with 133,000. As with the Kipling books, there may be other versions of these works on Project Gutenberg with fewer downloads.
Strikes me as odd that a couple of (to me) obscure novels like "A Room with a View" and Middlemarch are that high up. Is there a recent TV show or movie or whatever about.
Re: I Wonder if Anybody Else in the World?
Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:46 am
by silverscreenselect
Spock wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:29 am
silverscreenselect wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:44 pm
The most popular "book" on Project Gutenberg over the last 30 days is Romeo and Juliet with over 166,000 downloads, followed by A Room with a View 145,000, Middlemarch with 142,000, Moby Dick with 135,000 and Little Women with 133,000. As with the Kipling books, there may be other versions of these works on Project Gutenberg with fewer downloads.
Strikes me as odd that a couple of (to me) obscure novels like "A Room with a View" and Middlemarch are that high up. Is there a recent TV show or movie or whatever about.
For Middlemarch:
When Taylor Swift first released the track list for her latest cottagecore album, a certain corner of literary Twitter lit up over the title of its eighth song. A little sadly for us, the lyrics of “Dorothea” don’t support the connection we quickly drew to Dorothea Brooke, fictional heroine of George Eliot’s Victorian novel Middlemarch. But regardless of whether Taylor had Eliot’s provincial character on her mind when she named the track, our reaction to it encapsulated the novel’s uncanny ubiquity in recent months. Since the start of the pandemic, it’s felt to me as though everyone has been reading Middlemarch.
On the face of it, this surge of interest in Eliot’s best-known work might seem unremarkable. But there’s a not-so-obvious reason that the 19th-century novel may have felt newly relevant for 2020 readers. Eliot probably conceived Middlemarch as a story about contagion—a plot with epidemic written into its core. And if we read it closely, the finished product is still “about” contagion. Middlemarch, in other words, is a pandemic novel without the pandemic.
https://lithub.com/the-hidden-narrative ... will-spot/
I can't find anything that would account for the popularity of A Room with a View. However, for both of these, if a couple of popular influencers recommended the book, that could boost downloads considerably.