Over on Marginal Revolution, Steve Landsburg is wondering if there are too many books and says something a little strange:
Writing a book is not like growing an orange. If you grow the best orange in the world, the second best orange still gets eaten. But if you write the best book in the world, the second best book loses a lot of readers. So the market price of an orange is an excellent reflection of its true social value, whereas the bulk of Dan Brown’s $20 million is only an excellent reflection of what he was able to divert from some other author to himself.
I find this passage quite mysterious. Why would people smart enough to eat the best and second best oranges not be smart enough to read the best and second best books? Compared to oranges, books involve a much larger cost in time and money and are far more variable in quality, so people would presumably choose them more carefully.
If I read 50 books in a year, and I decide to add The Da Vinci Code to my reading list for this year, I would drop the 50th book on the list, not the first. Or maybe I would increase my reading list to 51 books and watch less television. Or I would sleep a little less. Certainly the tradeoffs would occur at the margins as with everything else.
Perhaps I’m missing something in the way the book market works. For example, I could understand if book prices varied with quality like meals at restaurants. Then if I ordered swordfish today, I am more likely to have traded it off against a fine fillet mignon than against 6 Big Macs. Similarly, if all the really great books cost $100, I might substitute one for another rather than give up 4 or 5 further down my list.
Am I missing something here?
Mark,
No, you’re not missing anything.
From an email I sent to Alex at Marginal Revolution —
Alex,
I find it ironic that Steve Landsburg would publish the following on a blog entitled ‘Marginal Revolution’ —
“Writing a book is not like growing an orange. If you grow the best orange in the world, the second best orange still gets eaten. But if you write the best book in the world, the second best book loses a lot of readers.”
This is not true at all. The best book in the world, even if everyone agreed on what it was, affects only the last, marginal book chosen by each and every reader. Even if readers only read twelve books per year, the affected original twelfth choice would vary widely over different readers, having a very dilute specific effect on any one book.
Regards, Don