“Give Me a Book Rec”—Information Cascades in Books
When looking for something to read, where do you typically look first? The typical reader would consult a bestseller’s list, such as the top books on Amazon or the New York Times Best Seller list. Reading itself can be an arduous task, and the quality of experience is highly dependent on the type of book that is chosen. It’s hard to figure out if a book is worth reading just from its cover, and oftentimes when a reader is deep within an unenjoyable book, they waste a lot of time. For these reasons, a person is likely to trust the information signals of other people—in other words, it is easy for a person to read what is currently popular. Furthermore, a person is unlikely to know much information about the book itself, so they are solely relying on the information provided by others.
In class, we learned about information cascades: when people abandon their own knowledge and follow the previous decisions of other people. This leads to imitation and is a common phenomenon when it comes to consumerism. Research has shown that information cascades are highly applicable when it comes to the self-reinforcing popularity of books, particularly e-books. Since most readers choose books based on what they observe other people reading, this poses a chain of events where people follow the decisions of others. Reading books that are first read by others provides direct benefits to the reader, as the reader has more opportunities to talk about the content of the novels with others. Moreover, if the book a reader chooses is popular, they reap a social capital amongst elite circles for reading something with “good taste.”