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.)
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November
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- 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
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- Women on the Outside: Two Memoirs
- Quote of the Week: Burn!
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