There's an old saying to the effect that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and this here infographic about bestselling SF is a sterling example of that.
It's breathtaking in its stupidity and mistakes -- I'm half-convinced that every single "fact" in that image is utterly wrong.
For one example, it chirpily announces that Slaughterhouse-Five has sold more than 60,000 copies! Actually, the current trade paperback edition has sold about that many copies in the last two years -- the total number of sales is vastly higher. (I'd ballpark it in the 5 million range.)
It's also nuttily inconsistent in its aims -- it's far too long, to begin with, and doesn't present books in any coherent sequence (such as a countdown or countup), but tosses them at random, with odd (probably incorrect) factoids that usually, but not invariably, are numbers connected to sales figures.
(There are also plenty of grammatical, syntactical, word-choice, and other errors as well -- a fully-annotated version of this thing would be massive.)
In fact, if any of you out there are also marketers, as I am, this infographic is a perfect bad example of the form. If you ever set out to make an infographic, this is exactly what you don't want to do.
(Hat tip to Making Light, which discovered and made fun of this before I did.)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2012
(395)
-
▼
November
(28)
- Read in November
- More Books Than You Can Shake a Stick At
- Loudon Wainwright om kärlek
- It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...
- Bushman Lives! by Daniel Pinkwater
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 11/24
- Cirkeln sluts: Love will meet again...
- Ännu en fas om kärlek
- Something I Should Remember, But Never Do
- Stabil sprödhet med Great Lake Swimmers
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 11/17
- 2012 World Fantasy Award Winners
- Triologi om politik med Steve Mednick
- Superheroics!
- Possibly the Worst Infographic Designed by the Han...
- Fler kritiska sånger om Amerika
- This Is My Country - om Amerika och krig
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 11/10
- Amerika - plus och minus
- Fyra års katastrof avvisad
- An Avalanche of Books from the Top Shelf
- Jimmy Ibbotson - låtsnickrare med smittsam glädje
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 11/3
- Åter en av en minoritet
- Jimmy Robinson - Gitarrfantom med känsla
- Women on the Outside: Two Memoirs
- Quote of the Week: Burn!
- Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson
-
▼
November
(28)
Popular Posts
-
Sandy Denny dog 1978. Thea Gilmore föddes 1979. Ändå upptäckte hon Sandy Dennys musik via hennes pappas skivsamling. Nu, många år senare, er...
-
Haruki Murakami Bingo , from the inimitable Incidental Comics . This is only one square -- clickthrough for the entire thing.
-
Just nu hinner jag knappt med livets vardagliga nödvändigheter, men snart kommer oktober och då lättar det. Och det kommer en massa spännand...
-
NoiseTrade offers a lot of free music -- usually samplers or live EPs -- but occasionally there's a full album up there. Now is one of t...
-
Det kan man ju inte tro... Lucinda Williams fyller 60 i dag! Jag tror att det var Emmylou Harris som en gång sa något i stil med: "Jag ...
-
And via James Nicoll : I Am A: True Neutral Human Bard (5th Level) Ability Scores: Strength- 12 Dexterity- 12 Constitution- 14 Intelligence...
-
This is my first "Reviewing the Mail" post to be composed in Blogger's hideous new template -- it's as Google-riffic as an...
-
But I am stealing it anyway, because it is awesome: (It also reminds me of some psuedo-Impressionist watercolors -- also with tasteful A.A. ...
-
Mark Davis - Eliminate The Toxins Vet inte hur det kommmer sig, men det kommer så mycket bra musik från Kanada att det verkar vara mer regel...
-
Elliott Murphy, Blidösund, Stockholm, 2013-07-17 För ett år sedan såg jag Elliott Murphy för första gången och jag anade inte att det skull...