Last week I was bleating about the new catchy catch-all genre moniker of ‘Up-Lit’ – following in the faddy tradition of ‘Grip-Lit’, right back to the grandmother of it all, ‘Chick-Lit’ and all those other Lits in between (or what I like to call ‘Really Fecking Annoying Names For Things Which Really Shouldn’t Be Grouped Together Because They Have No Fecking Connection Really’).

One of the consequences of the explosion in self-publishing is that more titles are loaded onto virtual bookshelves on a daily basis than any databank could reasonably be expected to handle. It’s the publishing world’s version of Big Data. And as we all know, Big Data is meaningless without analysis.

The problem with analysis is that results will always be produced, even when there are no tangible results. I know this, because I also deal with Big Data for a living. Analysts are sent forth to find patterns and…