Tuesday 2 October 2018

Phil's Law

What I term rather immodestly as Phil's Law goes something like this:
When you see a single book, in a bookshop or a library, that is from a series it is usually the second one from that series. It is almost never the first one
On first glance this seems pretty obvious. If there is more than one book in a series then the likelihood of seeing any one book is in ratio the number of books in the series. So a trilogy has a 33% per cent chance of each book being seen.

But my experience is that there's about a 60% chance of seeing the second book, 25% the third and 15% the first. Which just seems strange. And the chance of finding more than one book (especially from trilogies) seems out of proportion too, with a single book being much more likely. If a bookshop stocks books from a series would it not make sense to at least have the first one for people who want to start there?

There are rare exceptions here. Series that I found the first book of first include The Innasmorn Saga by Adrian Cole, Low Town by Daniel Polansky and The Pilgrims by Will Elliott (all fine series by the way).

Sometimes the book is a higher one in the series; I read The Lord of the Rings 'backwards' when I first read it; Return of the King then The Two Towers then The Fellowship of the Ring. I sometimes wonder if this has had a subtle effect on the way I perceive that series.


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