Says Michael Huemer over at Cato Unbound.
Excerpt:
Atlas Shrugged outsells Human Action by a wide margin. As of this writing, the Amazon sales ranks are 101 and 16,331, respectively.[2] (Admittedly a limited measure, but still interesting.) But Atlas also outsells Rand’s own non-fiction books, by similarly wide margins. The Virtue of Selfishness trails at 11,993, with Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology all the way down at 120,117.[3] If the greater market success of Rand as compared with von Mises were due to Rand’s broader philosophy, wouldn’t we see this reflected in sales of Rand’s non-fiction works, in which she explicitly develops that philosophy?
The data fit another hypothesis: that the novel is a far more accessible and popular vehicle for communicating ideas than the monograph. The lesson for defenders of freedom seems clear. We need more novelists, screenwriters, and other artists.
I agree.
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