I think it’s fair to say that what preoccupies the minds of most book people is the question of which books sell, and why. The rumble around this issue has gotten louder in recent weeks, amid news of and discussion about changing newspaper coverage. As I indicated last week—and as many others have suggested before and since—nobody really knows how much reviews, off-the-book-page coverage and even advertising influences sales.

So it can be instructive to look at books that get a lot of ink and/or “buzz” and then look at their sales. The New York Times did this a few weeks ago with Leslie Bennetts’s The Feminine Mistake and concluded that the 5,000 or so copies that Nielsen BookScan reported sold was woefully disproportionate to the amount of noise the Hyperion/Voice book had generated. (Never mind that the piece itself created even more conversation, and that now, the number sold is up to 8,000.) That information was probably surprising only to Times readers who toil outside our beloved business: while 5,000 books is hardly in the blockbuster galaxy, most book people would say it’s not bad for an “issue book” that had, at the time, been in stores for less than a week.

Still, partly because they don’t quite know what else to do, publicists still seek buzz and ink and “coverage” as part of the let’s-throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks publicity philosophy. And sometimes, something does stick. Consider, for example, George Tenet’s At the Center of the Storm, one title that has an impressive buzz-to-sales ratio. The embargoed book was (of course) leaked before its April 30 pub date. While few formal reviews have been published, there have been countless stories about the book, as well as interviews with Tenet and his supporters and detractors: presto, the book sold a whopping 46,000 in its first week, according to BookScan. Likewise, Michael Chabon’s very different title, the novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, has generated reviews (rapturous to positive to mixed) and profiles of its affable author; it’s sold an impressive (for fiction) 23,000 in its first week.

Whether sales like this will continue once the noise abates remains to be seen, but impressive beginnings are enough to perk up the most down-at-the-mouth publicity department and further the idea that we should have more, not less, book coverage. And I certainly wouldn’t argue with that. But let’s face it—part of what’s noteworthy about these numbers is that they’re so very rare. For all the books we publish, very, very few titles that aren’t by or about brand names (see Walter Isaacson’s Einstein, which is both, and which sold 48,000 copies in its first week) perform this well, whatever the reviews. (Hermione Lee’s Edith Wharton—a brand name to some, anyway—received some of the more glowing coverage in recent memory, but has so far sold “only” 6,000 copies.)

That doesn’t mean such books shouldn’t be published or even reviewed. Although publishing is and should be a business, it also is and should be something else. While I’m sure, for example, that Leslie Bennetts (and her publisher) would welcome greater sales, they should also take heart in all the debate her book has generated. Publishing is at its best not just when it sells books but when it seeds the cultural conversation.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at www.publishersweekly.com/saranelson