Quantifying Reader Appeal

So while School Library Journal courts controversy by saying that children didn't like several recent Newbery winners, they don't feel compelled to provide any actual evidence to back up the claim.

Also, to use an example I've used many times before, adults often say that "their teens" do not like or get Octavian Nothing. The conventional wisdom then becomes that Octavian is a great book; i.e., that no one would ever choose to read it. But why then have more than 100,000 people purchased it--making it a bigger commercial success than most "commercial" fiction published for teens?

http://www.sparksflyup.com/2009/01/quantifying-reader-appeal.php