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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what "literary fiction" is, exactly. I suspect that, for the most part, it's been a status symbol. Back in the day, one needed copies of the latest stuff on tables and shelves. But on Facebook, one can fake it, based on Goodreads etc. No dead trees needed.

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Around one in five, one in four books were bought with no intention of reading. On one hand that's a lot of faking, on on other, the other three fourths is much more and not fake. (Source: Editors I knew, over alcoholic beverages.)

EDIT: "Were", not "are", because I've lost touch in the past years and don't know how it is nowadays. Sales have dropped, the audience may have too. (Still see gorgeous women in the bookshops though.)

I have no idea how many books are bought just for show, but why would being an editor provide you with insight into the numbers? How could they know?

Surveys? Or, possibly, the book:ebook sales ratios?

Unless a survey asks specially about whether a person bought a book with no intention of ever reading it AND people actually provide an honest answer to that question, then I can't see how a survey could provide the answers.

How do you think sales ratios could provide the figures about people's purchase intentions?

There do exist services for buying books purely for aesthetic reasons, like Books By The Foot. They've got a special now for "Holly & Ivy", for $49 per foot you can buy books with green or red colored spines to give your house a Christmas ambience:

https://www.booksbythefoot.com/shop/pc/Holly-Ivy-3p232.htm

I assume sales to those services are nowhere near as high as 20%, but counting sales to similar services (and Hollywood set designers, bulk orders to interior decorators, etc) could go some way towards calculating a percentage.

Those figures would be interesting, but none of them are going to give accurate numbers for the numbers the original comment was talking about, because they tell you nothing of the number of people who buy the books (with no intention of reading them) by more conventional means. They don't provide any way to infer those numbers.

Editors talk at parties, just like everyone else. If you're invited to a publishing house's christmas party you'll chitchat and learn factoids like that one. (You may also meet your future wife. I did.)

As to how they'd know: Editors are the people who effectively decide what books are published. Their income depends on their insight into customer behaviour. Wouldn't you try to learn why books are bought?

I asked how they are supposed to know. Saying that their job depends on insight into customers isn't explaining how they know. The only explanation you provide is: from taking to people at parties. I fail to see how that is supposed to provide insight into how many books purchased by the public at large are bought with no intention of being read.

Let's consider the problem. Presumably the majority of people who buy books that they have no intention of ever reading would never admit to that fact. How do you then figure out the numbers of such purchases? (Remember that the comment I originally replied to gave specific figures). How does being an editor somehow give you any meaningful insight into those figures?

I suppose I'd better ask. Look here again in a day or two, please.

What if I bought a book with the intention of reading it, but with no established reading schedule or deadline to finish?

If I buy it for someone else or out of loyalty to author, is it counted as no intention to read? If I buy it and then somehow am not in mood to read it or dislike it after few pages, how does it count?

Also, majority of games bought at steam is never played. People buy it because they are discounted and there never go around playing. It is not for show, cause nobody see that. Large portion of those 1 in four gonna be like that too.

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