Amazon.com has added an “auto-complete” fucntion to its search box, so if you simply type in a letter, it “suggests” terms that begin with those letters. And, as C. Max Magee observes in an interesting post at The Millions, “It’s probably safe to assume that it suggests the most frequently searched words, so, if we look at Amazon’s book section we can type in letters and discover, for each letter of the alphabet, the most popular searches on Amazon.”

Thus, says Magee, we have “a peek into the reading habits of America and, like it or not, a primer for what’s popular in the world of books.”

Or do we? As one commentator on the post notes, “‘Safe to assume that it suggests the most frequently searched words’? I wouldn’t assume that at all – given how hugely successful Google’s business model has been, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Amazon was selling paid placement in its search results to publishers.”

Well, safe to assume or not, the results are telling, as we can see in what Magee calls ”the ABCs of Amazon” (with his commentary) —

• Angels & Demons
• Breaking Dawn (The first of several Stephenie Meyer appearances)
• Charlaine Harris
• Dan Brown (no surprise here)
• Eclipse (Another for Meyer)
• Freakonomics
• GRE
• Harry Potter (as if there was any doubt)
• ISBN number search (funny because ISBNs work in the search box)
• James Patterson
• Kindle (natch)
• Lora Leigh
• My Sister’s Keeper (by Jodi Picoult)
• Nora Roberts
• Outliers (by Malcolm Gladwell)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Zombies!)
• Quilting
• Renegade
• Stephenie Meyer
• Twilight (more Meyer)
• Uglies
• Vampire (You can chalk this one up to Meyer too)
• Wicked
• X-Men
• Yoga
• Zane