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Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies (2022)
- vintagedave 2y agoShort summary: internet meme statistics! > most traditionally published novels that you see on bookstore shelves or reviewed in newspapers sell several hundred to a few thousand copies across formats This is interesting. I had envisaged tens of thousands or more. If this is US-based, and there are hundreds of millions of Americans, that is a very low ratio of book to person.
- nullhole 2y agoOn the plus side, you can reasonably claim that the brand new, non-bestseller, book you bought is a rare book, since "there are likely only a few hundred copies in peoples' hands* throughout the world". *A way of skirting the fact that there are probably >1000 copies in warehouses that will be pulped at some point
- naniwaduni 2y agoSince most books are, at any given moment, probably lying somewhere and not being actively held, chances are pretty good that yours is the only copy currently in a person's hand!
- em-bee 2y agotwo people holding the same book in their hands at the same time is so rare that you can actually feel it when it happens ;-)
- neaden 2y agoDoesn't this partly come down to how you define most books? Like yeah, if you go to a bookstore and look at the shelves you are seeing the books that the store thinks are going to sell, not the thousands of books they chose not to stock. Most books (as in the individual physical books) created in a given year are going to be a relatively small number of best sellers.
- Longlius 2y agoOnly ~70% of Americans read at least one book a year.
- delfinom 2y agoThat's a suspicious statistic in my opinion and feels like something people would like about on a self reporting survey lol.
- queuebert 2y agoIs that an entire book or any part of any book? Does it count audiobooks? I know a lot of people who claim to "read" a lot of books, but they actually are listening to audiobooks.
- thinkingemote 2y agofrom a comment under the article: > I think the real story is that roughly 66% of those books from the top 10 publishers sold less than 1,000 copies over 52 weeks. > And less than 2% sold more than 50,000 copies.
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoThat was super interesting to me as well. The full set of values is here: > The data below includes frontlist titles from [top ten publishers]... 45,571 unique ISBNs ... for the last 52 weeks (thru week ending 8-24-2022). > In this dataset: >>>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 Source: Kristen McLean, lead industry analyst from NPD BookScan, at https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen/comment/8883524 https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-.... Now I'm curious how unique the many books on my shelf are!
- bradley13 2y agoSo, just doodling on a virtual napkin with some round numbers: - If you're not writing to a formula, writing a book will take 1000 hours - You net $2 per sale - You want a salary of at least $20/hour = You need to sell at least 10,000 copies of your book, in order to make a living. Which 6.7% of the books achieved. Rather: 93.3% of the books did not achieve this. Note also: These are figures from professional publishers. Self-published books have (afaik) far less success. Conclusion: writing, like any other art form, is unlikely to be a way to make a living. Better to keep it as a hobby, while working a job that pays the bills.
- vidarh 2y agoSome may spend 1000 hours on a novel, but many will write far faster. The stories of authors who looks themselves in an office for a week or two to write another novel is so "common" as to be a trope (Simenon is one example of someone who'd spent a week or two on his novels during his most productive period). I've written two. The second one took me about 33 hours of writing, and a couple of tens of hours more of editing. But yes, you're not going to make a lot of money unless you're both talented and hardworking and lucky. In the UK the average full-time author earns below minimum wage - but the average full-time author lives in a household earning well above average; in other words, being a full-time author is, for most people who do it, an indulgence made possible by a two-income, usually reasonable well off, household.. Far more common is doing it alongside another job, and that's true even for a lot of very successful writers - even a few relatively speaking big successes are often not enough to live off unless you write fast and consistently.
- k_roy 2y agogot lost in all the "quotes" I think the main takeaway here is publishing a book isn't the road to riches, though nor has it ever been
- ghaff 2y agoMy anecdote is that I sold a somewhat technical book through one of the big publishers, then got a second edition, earned out my advances but basically earned beer money. I'm guessing that's not unusual. (Was still great as a career move but made very little direct money.)
- Qworg 2y agoAnother anecdote - I sold a technical book through one of the big publishers, never heard back post advances, and found out that the international edition wasn't considered to be part of my royalty agreement. This was bad for my coauthors and I as the international edition became part of the curriculum for several universities for several years. Live and learn.
- bombcar 2y agoI suspect that certain classes of books (technical books being one of them) have much more predictable markets (and so if you polled tech writers, you'd find many who earn out their advance but not much beyond).
- ghaff 2y agoYeah, and I suspect at least a modest amount of my earnings came about because I got organizations I knew to organize book signings that they purchased books for.
- bombcar 2y agoOne advantage of self-publishing (even on Amazon where you can order "author's copies" - https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G7BBN68RYX5UMDZF https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G7BBN68RYX5UMDZF ) is that you can get the "whole enchilada" if you do the footwork at conventions, speaking slots, etc. And anyone who is already doing those kinds of things, should consider writing a book to go along with it, even if self-published. The sales can add up over time.
- tptacek 2y agoOne thing that’s true is publishing works on a blockbuster model. Most books sell relatively few copies and a handful sell millions. The statistics about the vast majority of traditionally published books selling fewer than five thousand are likely true I didn't see the "dozen copies" or "less than 99 copies" thing, but I did read an article on the front page about the overwhelming majority of published books not recouping their advances, and this article seems to concur. Of course, that's what you'd expect; it's how a lot of businesses work.
- giantrobot 2y agoBooks not recouping their advances is definitely a thing. With a traditionally published book an author makes their money off royalties which is a few percentage points of the price of the book. The percentages are different for the various formats of the book, a hard cover has different rates than a paperback or eBook. The advance is paid out of the author's royalties for the book. If an author is making a dollar per sale, they'll need 5,000 sales to cover a $5,000 advance before they actually see any additional money from the book. Audiobooks and foreign translations are their own kettle of fish and don't tend to count towards sales to pay down the advance. Sometimes even eBooks don't count towards "sales" to pay down the advance but that is typically older pre-eBook contracts. If an author publishes multiple books with the same publisher each book will have its own advance and sales tracked. A new edition will often come with its own advance but have its sales tracked separately from previous editions. Sales of Book A have no effect on the royalties for Book B. The upside for an author is an advance is a bet on the part of the publisher. So long as the author doesn't break their contract by missing a deadline or not doing the work, they don't have to pay back the publisher's advance (conditions will be in the contract). An author that has an unsuccessful book won't typically end up owing the publisher their advance even if their sales never actually manage to pay it back. For publishers, unless the author totally screws them over, aren't really positioned to lose money on an advance. The blockbusters make them enough money to farm potential blockbusters with other authors. They have lots of ways to get rid of low demand books including just writing them down as a loss so they'll break even on the advance. They're also not going to pay out huge advances to an author with no history or no apparent demand. Source: I know a bunch of people that have published books.
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- richrichie 2y agoThe distribution of income from books is quite similar to what we see in professional sport or entertainment - a small % take away nearly everything.
- slumberlust 2y agoConversely, is there an industry where this isn't the case? Does a truly top to bottom spread exist in any industry? Movies/Entertainment? Agriculture? I don't know the answer but your comment prompted the line of thinking.
- blackhawkC17 2y agoYes, medicine, law, engineering and most typical industries. You can earn a good living as an average engineer, doctor, or lawyer, but obviously won’t earn millions unless you get to the top level. In contrast, the average author, musician, and YouTuber earns less than minimum wage and need a second job to enable them survive while they hope to strike it big with their hobby (most of them won’t at the end)
- ghaff 2y agoBasically any normal job. There are tiers within those normal jobs but assuming some base level of competence, it's mostly not the delta between Taylor Swift and someone playing for tips at the local bar on weekends or doing Tik-Tok.
- Terr_ 2y agoI think there's a little ambiguity in the question here, between stuff like "what is the distribution of different books by sales" versus "what is the distribution of companies by market-share." (To illustrate the difference, imagine a world where 99% of all books were sold by UberPublisher but almost every book-title in their catalog is equally popular.)
- eddythompson80 2y agoMechanics, plumbers, doctors, nurses, engineers, electricians, landscapers, elevator installers, accountants, lawyers, air traffic controllers, pilots, architects, HVAC installers, Sure you can find examples in every industry where few are paid far more than average or norm in that industry, but nothing like the spread you find in pure popularity based industries like entertainment be it professional sports, music, acting, YouTubers, streamers, authors, poets, etc.
- IronWolve 2y agoAlso consider how many audiobooks/books are now crowd sourced, and only available on 3rd party sites for the first 1-2 years, then available to kindle free and audible. Those numbers reflect in Amazon sales numbers.
- tomrod 2y agoI am unaware of this. Where can one find these audiobooks?
- IronWolve 2y agoMany books start out as a story to see if people like it on HFY, LitRPG or Royalroad type forums, then if people vote up, they start kickstart/patreon to write the series. Many new authors have started like that. Its also how some manga/anime are launched, content fans really want is turns into content. The comic book industry also used this model, thats why so many 3rd party publishers now.
- em-bee 2y agonathan lowell started publishing his books read by himself on podiobooks for free. that's where i discovered him myself. it seems he is doing pretty well now.
- pimlottc 2y agoI assume you mean crowdfunded, and not that the actual book content is crowdsourced?
- IronWolve 2y agoBoth, many new writers are publishing shorts, and if popular, then turned into paid content by kickstarter type funding. Many new writers have popped in the last 10 years due to the internet. Almost like podcasting, Podcasts are free, but then paid content can come out of it. Short stories to books, cartoons to comics, etc.
- varispeed 2y agoTwo book authors meet in a cafe: - I bought the book you released last week, it was really entertaining read! - Oh! It was you!
- vidarh 2y agoWhen my colleagues at my day job discovered I'd published a novel, I could tell roughly how many of them (most) bought it right away from my sales stats... I've sold more than average, but to put it this way I'm still very happy I don't depend on it for money.
- elzbardico 2y agoMy personal experience knowing a lot of authors is that even a unknown author manages to sell at least a hundred or a few hundred books. Unless you're trying to make a living out of authoring books, I would say that selling more than a thousand books is already extraordinary success.
- kshacker 2y agoA book might be 20 bucks, amazon or bookshop will take a cut, publishing house will take a cut, and there are costs to be borne, so even with a 1000 books you are not breaking bank, are you? And I wonder if the textbook monopoly mostly favors the authors or companies?
- elzbardico 2y agoNo. Coffee money. I mean success in personal achievement terms, not on money terms.
- begueradj 2y agoIn France, after the editor, the book maker, the distributor, points of sale and the state (VAT) take their part, the author gets only 11% of every book sold.
- cfmcdonald 2y agoThis is accurate in my experience. My two self-published history books have sold about 400 and 150 copies respectively (combined print an ebook), with no marketing other than my blog, which occasionally makes it to the front page of HN. Note that this is purely a 'hobby' project at this scale. Both books are still in the red counting just the expenses paid for cover and interior design, illustrations, and editing (i.e. not counting the many hours of my own time). To make a self-sustaining amount of money self-publishing I would have to sell a lot more copies and make books that can be written with much less effort (e.g. genre fiction).
- thorum 2y agoI wonder how much a truly high-quality book recommendation service that actually worked and people trusted would change the landscape of the book publishing industry. My own experience as an avid reader is that it's quite hard to find books I actually like and that are worth spending money on. But when you hear these numbers about how many books are published and few books make it big, it makes me wonder how many amazing books there could be that I've never heard of because the publishing industry never marketed them.
- philshem 2y agoI’m using ChatGPT as a personalized book recommendation tool. After each book I re-open the thread and explain what I liked and didn’t like and then ask for some more book suggestions and short explanations why. It’s working well enough, and I’m on my 5th book so far with this method.
- JamesLeonis 2y agoDon't weep too many tears. These are the same publishers that market e-books at their physical copy prices, like their movie and music counterparts. > it's quite hard to find books I actually like and that are worth spending money on I bet there are people stuck deep in every one of these organizations trying to get e-books priced down as a way to do more market discovery, and thus more blockbusters statistically. However these ideas are blocked by upper management when they uniformly lambast lost imaginary revenue.
- _3u10 2y agoWhy wouldn't they? It costs about the same to make an ebook as a physical copy, and provides better value to those who read using ereaders. As well it makes the purchasing decision much easier for consumers.
- duxup 2y ago>Some books are never published in print at all and exist only as ebooks and/or audiobooks. And many books exist in “print on demand” form in which a physical copy doesn’t exist until someone purchases it. In the old days, books would go out of print when people stopped buying them. But in the modern digital age books can exist “in print” for forever. Yeah that was the answer to my first question. If they're only selling a few copies, no need to print many / any.
- begueradj 2y agoFrom a different perspective but related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958
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- lapcat 2y ago(2022) Related: "No one buys books" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958 > Sales to libraries, for example, can be a significant portion of a book’s sales. This is one reason why I was skeptical of some of the stats getting promulgated recently. My local library, not a particularly large library, has many shelves full of "obscure" novels that you and I have probably never heard of. This is repeated in libraries across the country and the world. I like to browse the stacks and select books somewhat randomly, an admittedly hit-or-miss procedure, but I've found some diamonds in the rough. I suspect that public libraries are not actually "stealing" from retail book sales. For a currently best-selling book, a library may have multiple copies but never enough to satisfy patron demand, and there's typically a long backlog on holds. Whereas for lesser-selling books, the library sales are a bonus and may expose readers to the writer in a way they wouldn't otherwise.
- wiradikusuma 2y agoI'm writing a book on building and launching mobile apps end-to-end ( https://opinionatedlaunch.com https://opinionatedlaunch.com ). I'm treating it like building and launching an app (Dogfooding my method! But for book-writing!). It's got a website, a marketing plan, and even an affiliate system. I took the self-publishing route because the book's target market is niche; there's only one CTO in a company. Someone I know went the publisher route, and I think he's quite successful. I have only sold a dozen so far, but I'm pricing it accordingly. In summary, I like to think of book authoring as starting a SaaS. Start from your target market, then the book topic, then from there you can tell whether you can cast a wide net, or aim narrowly.
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- ChrisArchitect 2y ago(2022) Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794673
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Yesterday's more recent: No one buys books https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958
- KingOfCoders 2y agoArgument for the article title: "I’m pretty sure publishers would go out of business if 50% of their books sold less than 12 copies!"
- OnionBlender 2y agoThe fake reviews for unpopular books are pretty funny. > My husband just loves this book here is his quote for this review: Hands down the best reference for learning system design concepts to feel confident going into a system design interview... Not so coincidentally posted on the same day the book was published, with 5 stars.
- hulitu 2y ago> Take the statistic that most published books only sell 99 copies. No wonder. 99 % in a book store is crap. "We can't sell books" say publishers "There is nothing to buy" - me.