How Can 500,000 People Claim ‘Books’ as a Skill on LinkedIn?

By Edward Nawotka

Yesterday morning I got an email from LinkedIn asking me if I wanted to add the skill “books” to my profile. It noted that 539,074 people had already listed this as a “skill.” Granted, it’s not entirely clear what the rather awkwardly phrased skill “book” signifies — most likely it functions like a keyword — but that’s a hell of a lot of people laying claim to having professional level interaction with books. As the book business becomes less-and-less rarefied a profession that number is likely to grow even more (although the site also indicated the number was only a 1% increase over the year before). In contrast 422,000 people claim the skill “Publications” and just 5,000 people claim “Book Reviews.” What this signals to me is there are a lot more people out there publishing books professionally than there are reading them professionally.

In contrast, here are a few other notable “skills” claimed by publishing and book related folks, and their associated numbers, on LinkedIn.