From time to time, I've told people that self-publishing a novel is one of the best ways to assure your anonymity in the ever-increasing surveillance society. Hardly anyone, it seems, makes their own decisions on what to read. Everyone wants to read what everyone else is already reading.
Further evidence of this all-too-human tendency -- essentially we are all sheep, hoping their is a leader around somewhere -- can be found in an article about declining book sales when best-seller lists are discontinued. It comes from an online publication called The Outline.