Shake, Rattle and Read

You know what's really cool about the internet?

Everything's so fast. Used to be, back in the day at least, that if you wanted to know what were the best-selling books in the nation, you had to consult your weekly installment of the New York Times Bestseller List. Once a week. That was it. And since by default, the best books out there MUST be the ones that sell the most copies, it was hard to stay on top of things. (Assuming one needs to stay on top of such a thing. But I'll get there in a moment.)

Nowadays, who needs the New York Times, except for maybe New York? And who the hell needs New York? Not me, that's for sure. New York is obsolete because we have Chicago, while the NYTimes is obsolete because we have Amazon.Com, and Amazon.Com can tell you which books are the bestsellers every HOUR.

That's right. The Amazon.Com Movers & Shakers list is updated every hour, and it lists the books that have been making huge increases in sales over the past hour. It's pretty astounding stuff. For example, as I stare at it right now, the hot seller for this hour--number one with a bullet, if you will--is Freedom from Fear: The United States, 1929-1945, by David M. Kennedy. This book has shown a 543% increase in sales TODAY. It has leapt from #103 on the Amazon Topsellers list to #16. It tops out ahead of both Beowulf and the first Harry Potter book, but hasn't yet dethroned such modern-day classics as Before I Say Good-Bye by American prosemaster Mary Higgins Clark (in at #15) or the inexplicable Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson (#5). Of course, I'm sure Johnson's long-awaited follow-up, Who Cut My Cheese? will sell just as well. (C'mon. That joke BEGGED to be made. Don't you give me that stern look, that disapproving frown.)

How does all this work, you wonder? Let's ask Amazon herself. Take it away, missy. "The Amazon.com Movers & Shakers index measures an item's rise in sales rank by comparing its current rank to its lowest rank in the previous 24 hours," says the website. "For example, suppose an item currently has a sales rank of 10, but has been ranked as low as 30 during the previous 24 hours. Its jump in the sales rank is 20 positions. Its Movers and Shakers index is thus 200 percent, that is, its 20-position jump is 200 percent of its current rank of 10."

On one hand, that's pretty cool. Suddenly books, once the province of geekdom, gain the hit-making cachet of a great pop single. Somewhere there's a lonely history grad student who's staggering into his dorm room, logging on to his laptop and leaping around with joy that his favorite book is racing toward the top spot on Amazon's Topsellers chart. Somewhere else, David M. Kennedy is doing an even more ecstatic leap for joy because his snoozy history book is selling like mad on the web. Though the Amazon audience isn't representative of bookbuyers everywhere, it does represent a pretty huge segment of the population at this point, and to have an instant snapshot of this considerable audience speaks to the power of the web.

On the other hand, who really gives a shit, anyway? Is there any more useless set of information than who buys what at some bookselling website? Isn't this just another case of the web giving people around the world to amplify the trivial into something that might hold meaning, if only to guide wayward fools into deciding which books to buy? And really, does the next Harry Potter book really need more of a sales boost than it already has?

And if the sales chart at Amazon.Com doesn't matter, then does this very slice of writing matter? NO WAY.

Yep, this was a big waste of time. Hollow. Space-filler. A momentary distraction, perhaps entertaining but utterly devoid of meaning or relevance. Please don't tell anyone. I might get fired.