Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

countercraft.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 143 posts

Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

#11

Post by mysterydip »

evandwight wrote: post #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…

With such a large portion less than 1000, it would be nice to see it broken down more. Was it more 20, or 900?

Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

#15

Post by II2II »

phantom_of_cato wrote: post #6

I 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 10,000-1…

The pedantry was intended to point out that there is plenty of room for publishers to mislead when they don't detail how the data is collected. When you don't have access to the data, it is usually the best one can do.

Even the comment by Kristen McLean has limits, though they are much more forthcoming about what the data includes. That said, I think they summed it up best when they said publishing is a gambler's game. That being said, whether the outcome is good or bad for a gambler depends upon how much they invested and the return across all of those bets. Their data does not venture into financial aspects. At best, it gives us an idea of the minimum number of units sold in a particular subset of the market.

Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

#16

Post by AlbertCory »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #7
evandwight wrote: post #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…

> 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 Grou…

When you limit your data to those published by (fairly) large publishers, you've already skewed the data irreparably. Most of them won't even look at a book unless an agent brings it to them, and most agents won't represent most would-be authors.

On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold.

Some other categories don't, either -- I know someone who publishes "cozy mysteries" through a real publisher (not a giant one), and she doesn't have an agent.

Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

#17

Post by nemo44x »

keyle wrote: post #12

The whole 2% makes 95% of all revenues doesn't just apply to books... it certainly is true for the video game industry, and I suspect, most of the industries being sold online.

Yeah power law distributions are everywhere nowadays. Nassim Taleb talks about this a lot and uses book sales as a reference, which is cheeky since he’s doing it in his own best seller books.

Re: Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

#19

Post by PuppyTailWags »

evandwight wrote: post #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…

BookScan isn't a reliable source of information unfortunately. It only counts when a book's ISBN is physically scanned over a scanner (no ebook, audio book, libraries, specialty sales, etc) and also only covers 75% of retail in general. Generally, you can bet BookScan largely undercounts by a very wide margin.
Post reply on HN