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BookFinder Reports that More People Were Searching for Fly Fishing in 2014 Than for "Sex"

body-king[1]BookFinder offers one of the best search engines for finding rare and out of print books, and every year this Amazon sub releases a new list of the most searched for titles.

I’ve always found browsing the list to be fun, but this year I was also surprised to see that the titles which had dominated the top spots for the past several years had been displaced by other books.

After several years of leading the list, Madonna’s Sex book, for example, was bumped to the number 3 position. It was dethroned by a book on military errors and a book on how to make a bamboo fishing rod.

Yes, folks, fly fishing is now more popular than Sex.

Other surprising additions to the list include Stephen King’s The Body, a 1982 novella. That is actually available as a reprint and in a couple of his collections, so I’m not sure how it made this list, but it displaced the perennial favorite The Rage (#5).

Stephen King usually has one or more titles in the top ten, and this year he has three, with The Colorado Kid taking the number 6 spot. That is a 2005 novel from S&S which you would think would still be in print (or at least available as a good quality POD) but is instead selling for over $34 (new) on Amazon (the ebook is only $5, luckily).

Oh yes, Bookfinder has a rather fluid definition of out of print. As they explained with last year’s list, even though a book has been re-released POD or is available digitally it can still make its way on to this list.  Personally, I would not label a book as OOP if new copies were still being produced, but they disagree.

The top ten list of most search for titles is filled out by The Road We Are Traveling: 1914-1942 by Stuart Chase, Richard Gale’s On the Nature and Existence of God365 Bedtime Stories by Nan Gilbert, and Collector’s Guide to Colt .45 Service Pistols by Charles W. Clawson.

Gale’s book is available as a POD edition, in case you’re interested, but the other 3 titles are still really out of print.

All in all, the list is a fun read. Did you find anything which surprises you?

BookFinder

P.S. Speaking of lists, a couple months ago AbeBooks posted a list of the most expensive books it sold in 2014.

 

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Comments


Tim F. February 4, 2015 um 7:22 pm

"Oh yes, Bookfinder has a rather fluid definition of out of print. As they explained with last year’s list, even though a book has been re-released POD or is available digitally it can still make its way on to this list. Personally, I would not label a book as OOP if new copies were still being produced, but they disagree."

Bookfinder’s raison d’être is locating, indexing, and value books which have value because of their scarcity. Of course, an ebook or POD version should not qualify.

Nate Hoffelder February 4, 2015 um 7:28 pm

But if it’s POD, it’s not out of print.

Tim F. February 4, 2015 um 8:16 pm

A POD has zero value as a physical commodity because there is zero scarcity. A rare or first edition limited-print can appreciate in value.

Nate Hoffelder February 4, 2015 um 8:26 pm

Actually, AbeBooks cares about rarity; BookFinder is just a search engine. It finds books in all conditions and formats.

Tim F. February 4, 2015 um 10:01 pm

I’m fully aware that BookFinder doesn’t concern itself with the truly exclusive and extremely valuable books nor focus only on high quality and first editions. (Abebooks doesn’t either for that matter although it’s clear that they better serve that market.) That doesn’t really change the fact that a POD has little to zero value for someone seeking an out-of-print book. It’s the book-ness that matters and most people that value that value a POD as much as a digital file.


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