Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
countercraft.substack.com
Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
1–10 of 143 posts
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#2I dunno, seems that the “spirit” of these comments is correct. I’ve self-published half a dozen small books that have only low double digit sales. The comment that goes through the data is also really interesting.
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#3Pretty long post for "I know that I know nothing".
However, there is gold in the comment section: Kristen McLean actually throws some numbers at us [1]. "66% of those books from the top 10 publishers sold less than 1,000 copies over 52 weeks". Well, uh, that's what I thought. Interesting nonetheless.
[1] https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-...
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#4>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more
>>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies
>>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies
>>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies
>>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies
>>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies
>>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies
>>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies
- Kristen McLean from NPD BookScan
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#5TLDR; author doesn't find the numbers shared in some Twitter gossip as plausible, but has no better data than their own gut feeling from being in the industry.
There doesn't seem to be much to take home here, other than that the original tweet isn't clear about its own denotation or veracity.
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#6I really don't like "fact-checking" articles like this which don't contain many useful facts, only pedantry. The first comment (by Kristen McLean from NPD BookScan) is much more interesting than the article itself:
>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more
>>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies
>>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies
>>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies
>>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies
>>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies
>>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies
>>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies
So, ~66.1% or 2/3 of books in their dataset sell under a thousand copies.
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#7>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies >>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies >>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies >>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies >>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies…
> Because this is clearly a slice, and most likely provided by one of the parties to the suit, I decided to limit my data to the frontlist sales for the top 10 publishers by unit volume in the U.S. Trade market. My ISBN list is a little smaller than the one quoted in the DOJ, but the principals will be the same.
> The data below includes frontlist titles from Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Scholastic, Disney, Macmillan, Abrams, Sourcebooks, and John Wiley. The figures below only include books published by these publishers themselves, not pubishers they distribute.
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#8"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#9Thus my self-publishing goal - to sell more than 12 copies. Well 14. Don't want to be superstitious !
Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies
#10I forget if there’s a term for this, but I once read (and subsequently discovered) that a large portion of disagreements are simply because people are working with different definitions for things.
This seems like an example of that: depending on how you define “book” these claims are accurate or not.