On January 2, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he would be challenging himself to read a new book every other week in 2015. As part of the effort, called A Year of Books, he would invite Facebook users to read along and participate in discussion of the books, which he said would have an emphasis on “learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories, and technologies.”
The post naming the first pick, Moisés Naím’s The End of Power, generated more than 7,000 “likes.” Since then, Zuckerberg has stayed true to his resolution, but the engagement from Facebookers has slowly fallen off. As we approach the halfway point of 2015, PW tracked the response from users for each book selection, and the impact of each choice on print sales.
A Year of Books
Each new pick is announced with a post on the A Year of Books Facebook page.
| Book Sales Week Before | Book Sales Week After | Book Sales 2nd Week | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The End of Power | 29 | 3,089 | 1,298 |
| The Better Angels of Our Nature | 223 | 475 | 423 |
| Gang Leader for a Day | 186 | 348 | 162 |
| On Immunity | 285 | 300 | 303 |
| Creativity, Inc. | 530 | 874 | 737 |
| The Structure of Scientific Revolution | 101 | 201 | 138 |
| Rational Ritual | 2 | 9 | 26 |
| Dealing with China* | N/A | 13,118 | 7,716 |
| Orwell’s Revenge** | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| The New Jim Crow | 2,187 | 2,096 | 2,345 |
| Muqaddimah*** | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sapiens | 657 | 1,254 | TBD |
Source: Nielsen BookScan.
* Picked just prior to its release date.
** Out of print; Free Press is releasing a new edition on June 30.
*** A 14th-century text that is out of print. Free PDFs of are easily found online.
