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Looking at the author's other works, it's like a soft touch clickbait. I mean it's certainly there but it's an interesting balance, pretty tempered https://www

Looking at the author's other works, it's like a soft touch clickbait. I mean it's certainly there but it's an interesting balance, pretty tempered https://www.npr.org/people/348743421/becky-sullivan https://www.npr.org/people/348743421/becky-sullivan You hear about this from authors all the time who get disappointed in what the publishers choose for the book title. It's been like this for a while. Donald Normans "the design of everyday things" was initially "the psychology of everyday things" but psychology books don't sell well and apparently such errant superficialities matter. He's a respectable academic, shouldn't be subject to such stuff, but here we are nonetheless. I wish I could say content works without marketing and a bit of formulaic sensationalism for the title but it really doesn't perform without it. It appears to be kind of a requirement.

kragen 6y ago
I don't think it's that psychology books in general don't sell well. The nonfiction bestsellers list always has a lot of psychology books in it†! But when it was "POET," it got shelved in the psychology section of bookstores. So, if you went into a bookstore looking for help coping with your childhood traumas or marriage problem, you might run across this book about how industrial products and software were badly designed, and how to design them better, using new findings from cognitive psychology. But if you went into the bookstore to learn about how to design industrial products or software, you'd end up in the "design" or "software" section, so you wouldn't find it. ______ † Right now Amazon's nonfiction bestseller list https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Nonfiction/zgbs/digital-text/157325011 https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Nonfiction/... has "The Psychopath" at #1, "Mindset" at #2, "Master Your Emotions" at #18, "The 7 Habits" at #21, "Girl, Stop Apologizing" at #28, "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do" at #31, "The Declutter Challenge" at #34, and "Thinking, Fast and Slow" at #50, plus a number of gray-area books; the New York Times has "Think Again" at #11. I think it's fair to say that psychology books sell a buttload.

kragen 6y ago

I don't think it's that psychology books in general don't sell well. The nonfiction bestsellers list always has a lot of psychology books in it†! But when it was "POET," it got shelved in the psychology section of bookstores. So, if you went into a bookstore looking for help coping with your childhood traumas or marriage problem, you might run across this book about how industrial products and software were badly designed, and how to design them better, using new findings from cognitive psychology. But if you went into the bookstore to learn about how to design industrial products or software, you'd end up in the "design" or "software" section, so you wouldn't find it. ______ † Right now Amazon's nonfiction bestseller list https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Nonfiction/zgbs/digital-text/157325011 https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Nonfiction/... has "The Psychopath" at #1, "Mindset" at #2, "Master Your Emotions" at #18, "The 7 Habits" at #21, "Girl, Stop Apologizing" at #28, "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do" at #31, "The Declutter Challenge" at #34, and "Thinking, Fast and Slow" at #50, plus a number of gray-area books; the New York Times has "Think Again" at #11. I think it's fair to say that psychology books sell a buttload.