Getting a Read on the Pandemic

This article explores the links between psychology – specifically, psychological needs, motivations, and coping mechanisms – and the sales of backlist titles during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how select titles on spirituality as well as The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl help readers to attribute meaning to the pandemic and in turn, to cope with the struggles of the pandemic. The article concludes that such books are connected by their psychological value to readers – the psychological needs they fulfil – and that books from disparate genres and on varying topics can help readers cope in similar ways.