In the Shadow of Dragonflies
Come for the Crawdads jokes, stay for an amazing podcast listener-generated project.
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The Marsh King’s Daughter may have come out before Where the Crawdads Sing, but it only got big afterward, and I think we all know why.
When a book is as big as Crawdads was, publishers attempt to ride the trend with a few predictable tactics:
Use it as a comp title at every opportunity, regardless of whether the contents really fit the comparison. “The next Harry Potter.” “The next Gone Girl.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
Use a word from the title into new book titles. See: those years when every book had “girl” in the title.
Use similar cover art. <waves hands at every contemporary rom-com from the last 3 years>
Since the Crawdads phenomenon, I’ve seen countless examples of 1 and 3, but not so much of 2. Hard to reuse a word like “crawdads” without looking like you’re doing, well, exactly what you’re doing, so publishers have had to get (slightly) more creative by selecting titles that channel the Crawdads ~vibe~.
Jeff and I have made a habit of texting each other when we come across these Crawdads wannabes. Here are a few recent finds:
Oh, publishing!
The rest have been lost to my phone’s delete-after-one-year setting, but I’m betting that you, listeners, have spotted plenty more. Shout them out in the comments, and stay tuned for my Delia Owens title generator.
On the Show
What is a Dad Book? Toward a New Theory (With Recommendations)
Book Nerd Movie Hour: The 35th Anniversary of The Remains of the Day [bonus]
And if you were a member of The Wheelhouse, you’d already have the latest main feed episode, about the best books of the year so far, Costco’s plan to exit year-round bookselling, and more.
In the Mailbag
JO: I’m going to clear out for this one. Just let it flow over you.
RJS: This is so freaking cool (we have the best listeners!) and right in time for a mid-year It Book checkin.
Hi Jeff and Rebecca,
I've been listening to your show since 2016 and I look forward to it every week (now multiple times a week!). The way your conversations blend business savvy with bookish commentary while also being fun and listenable really appeals to me -- so thank you for all of the great episodes over the years!
I'm writing today to share a little pet project of mine that I think you might be interested in: a tracker of Goodreads ratings over time for your It Book picks from April 2023 - present. I update this (manually, eek!) while listening to your It Book episode every month, and plan to continue to do so going forward. Originally, I was keeping this tracker just for myself, but I figured that you might want to see it, too -- especially with your It Book reflection episode coming up.
I've included a "methodology corner" below, but the tl;dr version - this spreadsheet tracks the number of Goodreads ratings and month over month percent growth (to account for momentum and make sure the broadly appealing titles don't dominate) for all of your It Book picks since the very first month. When titles stop seeing 10% month over month growth and aren't among the most popular titles of all tracking, I stop tracking them.
Some things that stood out to me in the most recent month:
Chain-Gang All-Stars is still managing to grow 10% month over month - impressive for a May 2023 litfic title!!!
The Barnes & Noble 2023 fiction picks (Heaven & Earth Grocery and Berry Pickers) are doing great and still growing fast.
Martyr! has a good amount of momentum behind it -- it's growing faster than other titles from its same release month, and in absolute numbers of ratings, it's only a couple hundred behind The Storm We Made (a GMA Book Club pick!)
It's overall shocking to me just how low some of these numbers are -- some books that feel like they have buzz on the literary internet, like Memory Piece, barely have 1000 ratings so far.
This month, I hid basically all of the fall's big titles, including The Vaster Wilds, The Fraud, and Let Us Descend. That's not what I would've predicted going into last fall, but it feels in line with the reception/chatter I've seen for all three. And here's something else interesting: James by Percival Everett, released in March, already has more ratings than The Fraud, and it's closing in on Let Us Descend (actually, it's passed it in the couple of days since I entered the data). It'll probably pass Vaster Wilds soon, too.
Winning the NBA didn't do a ton for Blackouts - it's still on the list, but barely. And doesn't even have 10k ratings.
No surprises when it comes to what has the highest absolute number of ratings, except maybe just how well Yellowface is doing. The most rated books are things like Fourth Wing, Emily Henry... I'm sure you could accurately fill in the rest of that list without even looking at the data.
The link above allows anyone to view the spreadsheet, and if you find it as interesting as I do, you're welcome to share. No anonymity needed. See below for more on the methodology!
Thanks!
Sophia (@bookphia on Instagram)
Methodology Corner:
As I mentioned above, this is something I was originally just tracking for myself, so the methodology is a little less sound than I'd like -- I've made little tweaks over time, which I'll explain below. Even still, I think the data's interesting!
This spreadsheet tracks the number Goodreads ratings (I started out with shelved, but Goodreads decided to make those numbers harder, maybe impossible, to access a few months in) at the beginning of each month. Since, as you've discussed at length, an "it book" is hard to define, the primary metric I'm using to measure a book's growth is month over month % change. This way, each title is compared only to itself, so I'm measuring momentum rather than overall number of ratings and litfic titles still have a fighting chance against the Emily Henrys of the world.
To avoid tracking an endlessly growing number of books, every time I update the spreadsheet, I hide books that are no longer seeing 10%+ growth. The one caveat is that for the EXTREMELY popular books, 10% growth is unlikely. So, the current criteria I'm using to flag books to remove from tracking are: Overall number of ratings is less than the 75th percentile of ratings (compared to other books still in the running that month) AND less than 10% growth. This ensures that the most popular books in terms of absolute numbers stick around.
One note: I've revised these criteria a few times, and might again! If you notice books that are hidden that feel like they should still be around... that's why. Overall, despite the irregularities, I think the bigger picture stories are still pretty clear!
The spreadsheet is currently filtered to books still being tracked/books that were hidden this month. If you filter on column E and unhide the hidden columns, you can go back in time and look at other titles.
There's conditional formatting on the # of ratings columns so that the most popular titles stand out visually.
Etc.
A pretty frequent request in our recommendation shows is for memoirs by older women who are single and childfree and happy with their lives. If that’s a thing you’re interested in, you may enjoy this interview with Bella DePaulo about her book Single at Heart. And here’s a blanket recommendation for
, which is a consistent source of wisdom and delight.Don’t forget to pick up your copy of Exhibit by R.O. Kwon for our bonus book club episode dropping 6/14.
Now talk amongst yourselves!