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Writing books is not really a good idea

ellegriffin.substack.com

11–20 of 630 posts

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#11
> there were 2.6 million books sold online in 2020 and only 268 of them sold more than 100,000 copies

I'm confused... just the top 0.0001% (268 x 100k) is 26.8M, yet they claim only 2.6M books were sold total for the full year. Am I missing something obvious?

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#12
post #3

I wonder how serializing a novel would mesh with most author’s work flow. I guess most would want to write it first and release monthly an already finished product?

A lot of 19th century fiction was done this way. Authors (Dickens, etc.) tended to work from a loose outline and construct the details as they rolled along.

Peer at those books closely and you can see some odd detours that were shut down. Also some padding to get more segment-by-segment payments. But it's workable

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#13
post #11

> there were 2.6 million books sold online in 2020 and only 268 of them sold more than 100,000 copies I'm confused... just the top 0.0001% (268 x 100k) is 26.8M, yet they claim only 2.6M books were sold total for the full year. Am I missing something obvious?

I think they meant 2.6 mil titles, not copies.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#15
post #11

> there were 2.6 million books sold online in 2020 and only 268 of them sold more than 100,000 copies I'm confused... just the top 0.0001% (268 x 100k) is 26.8M, yet they claim only 2.6M books were sold total for the full year. Am I missing something obvious?

2.6 million different titles sold, not 2.6 million copies

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#16
post #2

That’s more than I was expecting given the 98% selling less than 5000 referenced in the opening paragraph. But then again, that 2.6 million books were sold is also more than I expected.

2.6 million would mean 1 in 3000 people on earth, bought at least 1 book in the last year. That doesn't seem very surprising to me? Although I think you meant to write 27 million (268 * 100k) edit - ignore, I missed that it was 2.6m unique in the article

I think the 2.6 mil refers to the # of titles available for sale, not the number of copies sold.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#18
post #2

That’s more than I was expecting given the 98% selling less than 5000 referenced in the opening paragraph. But then again, that 2.6 million books were sold is also more than I expected.

2.6 million would mean 1 in 3000 people on earth, bought at least 1 book in the last year. That doesn't seem very surprising to me? Although I think you meant to write 27 million (268 * 100k) edit - ignore, I missed that it was 2.6m unique in the article

Somehow I get the feeling that people are dropping qualifiers left and right. For instance the 2.6 million is books sold online. And more importantly I strongly suspect someone somewhere failed to mention this was all U.S. only. At least I suspect it is.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#19
post #3

I wonder how serializing a novel would mesh with most author’s work flow. I guess most would want to write it first and release monthly an already finished product?

Release it chapter by chapter and put it up on substack/patreon or just for free in blog-style format. That's what ithare.com and some other programming books did to build an audience before (self) publishing.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#20
post #2

That’s more than I was expecting given the 98% selling less than 5000 referenced in the opening paragraph. But then again, that 2.6 million books were sold is also more than I expected.

I was surprised by how low the reported total number of books is. Then I realised they're only reporting online book sales. However, the number still seems quite low.
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