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Rob Ennals's avatar

My first guess would be that your US version came out before chatGPT and your Italian version came out after.

Anecdotally, it seems that chatGPT has got lots of people very interested in the subject of consciousness, which I can imagine being good for newly released books that touch on the subject.

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Graham Strong's avatar

Congrats on the success! (For the record, I didn't see your preamble as complaining but rather as an interesting observation...)

I've seen this happen before with writer friends -- a book will do well in some inexplicable places. I think that the reasons are probably all six, but Reason 2 most of all. When publishers get behind a book, they tend to do exponentially better, from my (albeit limited) experience. The ones ignored do the worst. But I think this is only part of the explanation. Things come into vogue and then disappear, and often at different times around the globe.

I'll put an asterisk next to Number 6 though -- I think there's an explanation, but we don't know it yet. Outside of literature, there are many examples, too. David Hasselhoff is big in (West) Germany. Schitt's Creek was huge in Canada, and for some reason broke out in the US where other shows did not. BBC's Cunk series, same thing -- been around forever in the UK and now a sensation when hitting Netflix. "Gangnam Style" became a hit worldwide for some unknown reason. Roxanne by the Police was released twice in North America and flopped the first time. Now, it's considered a rock classic. So not a "null" hypothesis, but perhaps an "X" hypothesis with many, many variables.

Whatever it was in your case, I say enjoy the lightning and let everything else take care of itself.

Viva l'Italia!

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