The Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg made a New Year’s resolution to read two books a month in 2015, and he’s inviting his 31 million Facebook friends to join him.
Over the weekend, Mr. Zuckerberg created a Facebook page, “A Year of Books,” where readers can follow along and discuss the books he’s reading. He posted his first selection, “The End of Power,” by Moises Naim, at close to midnight Eastern time on Jan. 2.
The announcement sent Mr. Naim’s publisher, Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus, scrambling over the weekend. “We had no prior notice and learned about it at the same time as everybody else did,” said David Steinberger, president and chief executive of the Perseus Books Group. “Orders are pouring in.”
Before Mr. Zuckerberg endorsed it, “The End of Power,” which came out in March 2013, sold 20,000 copies across all formats, including close to 4,500 e-books. It has sold more than that number of e-books since Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcement, Mr. Steinberger said. On Monday, booksellers placed orders for 10,000 more copies and it shot up to No. 19 on Amazon’s best-seller list.
In a Facebook post on his personal page, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote that he would be focusing on books about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies. He described “The End of Power” as “a book that explores how the world is shifting to give individual people more power that was traditionally only held by large governments, militaries and other organizations.”
In the social media era, celebrities and public figures can push sales of a book overnight. Last summer, Bill Gates blogged about the best books he had ever read and named “Business Adventures,” an out-of-print 1969 nonfiction title by John Brooks, as his favorite. The book shot to No. 2 on The New York Times nonfiction e-book best-seller list. Open Road Media brought the book back into print in a paperback edition in August, and has since sold more than 77,000 print copies and more than 126,000 e-books.
It is unclear how influential Mr. Zuckerberg’s new reading initiative will be in the publishing industry, and whether he can confer something akin to the “Oprah effect.” Oprah Winfrey’s book club, which she restarted online as Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, moves millions of copies. Ms. Winfrey chooses a few titles a year, while Mr. Zuckerberg will post a new selection every two weeks, possibly diluting the impact.
For publishers, an unanticipated endorsement from a celebrity or chief executive can be both a dream come true and a logistical nightmare. But responding to sudden spikes in demand has become easier with advances in digital publishing. A few years ago, Perseus created a digital platform, Constellation, that allows it to quickly fulfill new orders. While in the past it might have taken two to three weeks to print and ship additional copies, the company can now restock a book almost instantly. “The End of Power” was listed as out of stock for a few hours on Monday, but quickly became available again.
“The End of Power” was hardly an obscure title before Mr. Zuckerberg promoted it. Mr. Naim is a former executive director of the World Bank and served as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry. The book, which examines how power is shifting and disintegrating in business, religion, education and politics, was chosen as one of the best books of 2013 by The Financial Times.
Still, Mr. Naim said he was stunned to learn on Twitter Saturday morning that he had essentially won Facebook’s literary lottery.
“I was flabbergasted,” said Mr. Naim, who added that he planned to participate in the discussion on Facebook.
(The New York TImes)
