Quantitative approach to evaluating the influence of literary works using the graph theory

Abstract

The success of books is most often measured by circulation, the number of copies sold, reprints, the availability of adaptations, etc. Such metrics may not be objective enough, since they are subject to external factors - such as marketing and the relevance of the work at the time of release. Moreover, these metrics are subject to distortion over time. This article proposes a quantitative approach to assessing the significance of literary works through the construction of a graph of influence and the calculation of various centrality indicators for such a graph. The proposed method is applied to a network containing links between more than 460,000 works of world science fiction. A list of the main books that can be considered the basis of the genre is obtained from this network. The results of the analysis of the influence of individual authors are also presented.