Source
r/books•
rogne

I only read non-fiction books (history, documentary...) and I noticed how little that's discussed here. Are there any subreddits for that, or should one be created?

I looked in the different genres wiki and found nothing, i checked r/nonfiction but that's only for writers. Lots of people read books only in order to learn new information, so where is a community dedicated for this? If a subreddit needs to be made I'm curious what you guys think it should be called.

Although this is technically a "recommendation" post i looked through the extended rules and I didn't see anything against recommending a subreddit, but I apologize if this breaks any rules.

Posted Jul 21, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

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[deleted]

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DeadnamingMissDaisy•

Why not just post about it here? Plenty of folks read both.

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rogneOP•

It's not that i think me posting about non-fiction books here wouldn't be well recieved, it's that i want to find a subreddit where i can easily find discussion and find new books and such.

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Fragaroch•

Most of the people that I know who discuss non-fiction books tend to discuss them in the subreddit for what kind of book it is. For example if you're reading a history book most people go to r/history and mention that they found the information in a book and maybe find someone else who's read the book. I don't know if this is the answer you were looking for and maybe we should get a non-fiction section this subreddit, but for now if that's what you're looking for that's where you should look.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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TJ_Fox•

There may well be individual subreddits devoted to the subject matter of almost any given nonfiction book, so maybe they're the natural places to go?

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PantsuitNixon•

I read tons of nonfiction (and, in addition, listen to a great deal of nonfiction audio and watch a lot of documentaries) and I've yet to find a single subreddit that encompasses the variety of nonfiction available. Here in this sub, for example, we see On Writing or The Theory of Everything recommended a lot because those two examples appeal to the wide base of reddit users who are interested in understanding books as an art or using books as a tool. But for topical nonfiction, it really is best to use the topic subreddit. The reliability of a book- specific sub for recommendations related to a specific subject is going to be weaker than in a subreddit full of that subject's enthusiasts and experts.

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MsStormyTrump•

Yes! Make one! Awesome! I need recommendations about history of lawyering in the US and many other things.

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WhatEvery1sThinking•

Nom-fiction is too broad for a single sub. Your best bet is to go to subreddits dedicated to the subject matter - r/history, r/science, r/arthistory, r/economics, etc. although even those may be too broad and you might have to find an even more specific one

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taralundrigan•

It's no more broad than "books"...

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WhatEvery1sThinking•

This sub isn't broad at all though, 90% of topics boil down to either "I just read <insert popular novel here> and wow!" or "I just read a book for the first time in X years, please congratulate me". It's pretty much all fluff.

For actual discussion, people go to r/literature, r/printSF, r/fantasy, etc.

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oceanrainfairy•

I'd love to see more posts about nonfiction here, but the problem is - and would be for a general nonfiction sub, as well - nonfiction is subject based, and each subject is a niche, not something with broad appeal. If you read a book about Napoleon, and post about it, your only hope is if other people here are interested enough in Napoleon to have read a book about him - which isn't terribly likely. Whereas if you post about a fantasy book, it's far more likely someone has read it because fantasy has a broad appeal - while at the same time, it's kind of the problem we have with posting about less-popular books, and why it always seems like only a handful of super popular books are discussed here - there just isn't enough overlap between the population who has read them and the population of the sub. But post about them! You never know!

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Alberta_Fire•

It's just way too niche of a subject to garner enough traction to warrant a post. I've got a dozen legitimately great history books on my shelf but I'm positive that maybe only three other subscribers to this sub have read half of them.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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awalter3•

Please make one!

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Trystiane•

I was going to recommend the title r/nonfictionbooks but its already a subreddit. Have you looked there?

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esjro•

Looks like there are a lot of reposts of news articles and spammy stuff..... too bad.

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rogneOP•

Interesting, the only mod of that subreddit, u/leowr is also a mod of this subreddit, yet he hasn't taken any initiative to make it into a decent sub, not even linked it from this sub. I'd say that subreddit would have the most potential.

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leowr:redstar:59•

I picked it up a while ago because it had an inactive mod and was full of spam. If you are interested I'm more than willing to mod you.

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rogneOP•

You can add me but as i mentioned in another comment im not a particular good mod, lack of interest for the most part. I think simply featuring that sub in the "related subreddits" list and perhaps make an official announcement here to it would go a long way though

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leowr:redstar:59•

Both those things are definitely in the plan, but I don't want to do something like that when the sub doesn't have interesting content in there to get the people that visit to also stay after the initial boost. I haven't had the time to set it up properly, but I will see what I can do in the next couple of weeks.

You are welcome to start a discussion there. It has a fair number of subscribers and does has some interaction.

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Trystiane•

Maybe you can ask to be a mod, help beef the place up.

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rogneOP•

I have a few subs already and i'm a pretty awful mod tbh

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Trystiane•

Yea, I get that lol

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Dngrsone•

I also read a lot of non-fic, though I tend to stick to sub-genres like food-history, numbers-history, and science

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Dems4Prez•

try r/non-fiction book club

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