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Libraries and bookstores have become a new battleground for allegations of "obscenity" lobbed at books authored by or featuring people from marginalized backgrounds. Recently, the American Library Association published its list of most "challenged" books for the year 2024, with Maia Kobabe's graphic novel memoir, Gender Queer, taking one of the top spots. In light of this new political reality, researchers at George Mason University and Carnegie Mellon University have published a study in the journal, Marketing Science, that looks at the impact of book bans on consumer behavior. 

The study, entitled Book Bans in American Libraries: Impact of Politics on Inclusive Content Consumption, revealed some startling findings akin to the Streisand effect. Banned books, on average, had a 12% increase in circulation in American libraries compared to unbanned, similar books after a ban on that title was announced. The researchers also found that social media played a significant role in bolstering circulation of banned material, with banned books with "higher visibility" online getting circulated more often at libraries. 

There's a lot more that can be extrapolated from this nuanced study written by Uttara M. Ananthakrishnan, Naveen Basavaraj, Sabari Rajan Karmegam, Ananya Sen, and Michael D. Smith, and I encourage you to read the whole paper to get the full scope of what the researchers discovered. But to make one thing clear, don't interpret the results of this paper as a silver lining to book bans. Book bans are bad for all of us, generally. 

Here's a list of all the major upcoming prose novels in our favorite genres.