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> Even on the high end, there were only 11 books that sold more than 500,000 copies—which is paltry when you consider that the 10 best-performing Netflix films

> Even on the high end, there were only 11 books that sold more than 500,000 copies—which is paltry when you consider that the 10 best-performing Netflix films saw more than 68 million views. Reading a book takes far longer than watching a movie. Assuming ten hours for a book, that's 5 million "read hours" compared to 102 million "watch hours" (assuming 90 min) for the top movies. Plus, movies can be watched in the background or socially in a group. I'm not saying reading is not a niche - it probably is far smaller than it used to be -, but it's not as niche as this statement makes it out to be.

nemo44x 5y ago
But you can’t possibly make a work like “Gravity’s Rainbow” or “infinite Jest” into a movie. Hell, most adaptions of Hemingway are awful (original “Old Man and the Sea” not withstanding) because literature is not easily adapted to other mediums. It can only exist as writing because it is writing that challenges what reading is. Lots of non-literary fiction, like “Game of Thrones” translates well and having read the books and watched the show I’d probably agree with your assessment here - optimize for time. But real literature is only good as literature.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  I'm not saying one should optimize for time - I fully agree that movies and books can be quite distinct in what they accomplish. My point is that you can not stack up movies and books 1:1 for sales, as people have limited free time and one person watching exclusively movies, for example, would generate far higher watch numbers than a person only reading books would buy books (everything else being equal). While not ideal, I think comparing them by time spent gives a far better comparison of what is currently popular than simply comparing sales numbers.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I’d isolate literature from this though. Literature has always been a medium with a limited audience. In the past due to most people being illiterate compared to modern times where it isn’t accessible to many people due to literary complexity. The last 100 or so years has been an anomaly in that for the first time in history we had a highly literate population that could read fiction. And for much of this era movies and TV were not as accessible to create or consume. But today it is both affordable to create, distribute, and consume fiction via the motion picture therefore making written fiction niche as the audience for it isn’t interested in the literary aspect of it so much as the story telling element. So as we’ve had cumulatively more content disseminated at at accelerating pace it has made most written fiction as obsolete as the parlor singer or traveling news reader. Implanting the stories would do to TV what TV has done popular books. May be it time or effort, modern story dissemination technology allows people to consume more fiction per hour. I only think most people weren’t reading because they liked to read. They wanted to consume stories and now fiction books are just not able to compete with TV streaming. But literature should be continue on as it has.

nemo44x 5y ago

But you can’t possibly make a work like “Gravity’s Rainbow” or “infinite Jest” into a movie. Hell, most adaptions of Hemingway are awful (original “Old Man and the Sea” not withstanding) because literature is not easily adapted to other mediums. It can only exist as writing because it is writing that challenges what reading is. Lots of non-literary fiction, like “Game of Thrones” translates well and having read the books and watched the show I’d probably agree with your assessment here - optimize for time. But real literature is only good as literature.

Sebb767 5y ago
I'm not saying one should optimize for time - I fully agree that movies and books can be quite distinct in what they accomplish. My point is that you can not stack up movies and books 1:1 for sales, as people have limited free time and one person watching exclusively movies, for example, would generate far higher watch numbers than a person only reading books would buy books (everything else being equal). While not ideal, I think comparing them by time spent gives a far better comparison of what is currently popular than simply comparing sales numbers.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  I’d isolate literature from this though. Literature has always been a medium with a limited audience. In the past due to most people being illiterate compared to modern times where it isn’t accessible to many people due to literary complexity. The last 100 or so years has been an anomaly in that for the first time in history we had a highly literate population that could read fiction. And for much of this era movies and TV were not as accessible to create or consume. But today it is both affordable to create, distribute, and consume fiction via the motion picture therefore making written fiction niche as the audience for it isn’t interested in the literary aspect of it so much as the story telling element. So as we’ve had cumulatively more content disseminated at at accelerating pace it has made most written fiction as obsolete as the parlor singer or traveling news reader. Implanting the stories would do to TV what TV has done popular books. May be it time or effort, modern story dissemination technology allows people to consume more fiction per hour. I only think most people weren’t reading because they liked to read. They wanted to consume stories and now fiction books are just not able to compete with TV streaming. But literature should be continue on as it has.