When I first started out (my previous books were out in 2017 and 2019) it was talked about that an author needs about 10K+ for sales for the publisher to consider spending much on you for marketing for future books. What's your sense regarding that? I'm imaging that may have changed a bit with more print on demand?
Congrats on your MBA! And, thank you for this article! I'm not an author (or an aspiring one), but I host a book podcast and am fascinated with the behind the scenes of how the industry works. This is super helpful.
Enjoy a little recovery time after the MBA, you've done a ton of hard work. Note the PhD is strongly focused on research rather than teaching, which was a surprise to me and one of the reasons I put it off until later/maybe.
Where can I find good estimates of how many copies most books sell? You note that "no book sells 12 copies... that misinformation has been debunked many times" and yet that dataset is what I keep seeing. Case in point: Seth Godin's blog post from just this morning repeats this, with a graph explicitly showing that roughly 85% of books sell 12+ copies, but 15% _sell only one copy_.
Every book is different, so there is nothing in a data set that'll tell you the average sales of a book. There is no book in the world that only sells one copy. I am not a fan of Seth Godin because he is not always correct, and presents things without having worked in the industry. That graph is incorrect. Part of the problem is that people take information at face value, when people like me have been reading sales reports of books for years. Think about the economics of this: If 15% of books sold one copy, do you think as many publishers would be in business? They would not. The other thing is no one is differentiating formats, so it is assumed this is based on print figures, when in reality publishers look at sales across all formats. My issue is that people keep writing about book sales without contextualizing information, which is business school 101.
Kathleen just posted this in a separate post but I’ll copy it here for you: Publishers’ Marketplace posted this today as a detailed rebuttal to that ‘non-fact’:
That Stat Isn't A Stat
The discourse is once again reckoning all over the internet with a factoid from the PRH-S&S antitrust trial in 2022 that was not an established fact at all. The provocative Substack declaration -- "no one buys books" -- is based on an exchange during the trial that has been misunderstood from the start. The popular takeaway is a belief that the Department of Justice found that half of the new books published every year sell fewer than 12 copies in a year.
But going by the public record, that was never a fact introduced as evidence or supported by documentation during The Trial: It was a sensational bit of banter from a DOJ lawyer -- phrased as a question -- that was not recognized as valid by one of the two expert witnesses.
The exchange in question came on August 17, 2022, towards the end of The Trial. Government attorney Melvin Schwarz was questioning Penguin Random House's expert witness, Dr. Edward Snyder. Here is the citation from the transcript [p. 748 in our book]. We've added a few italics for emphasis.
Q: Do you have any idea about the--if you cut those 58,000 volumes a year, how many books--let's say half of those--the bottom half of those books, how many they sell in a given year. So the bottom half.
A: You're talking about the books--
Q: The 58,000 that are published, have you looked at all as to the cut of how many any given slice of the 58,000 sells in a given year?
A: I don't think so, because I also don't recall any evidence on how the books above $250,000 sell downstream. So you're asking--
Q: I was asking about all 58,000; that's ATS [Anticipated Top Sellers] and non-ATS.
A: I'm sorry, what's the question?
Q: Well, let me just ask it straight out. Would it surprise you to know that half of those 58,000 books sell fewer than one dozen books?
A: My book was in that category. Sorry.
Q: And if I had more time, I'd ask you to name the other 24,000 and a half there--excuse me, 29,000, there's my math. Would it surprise you to know that 90 percent sell fewer than 2,000 books?
A: I didn't study it.
Q: You just don't know?
A: I didn't study it. I don't think there's any evidence on the record. I would not be surprised.
So the "statistic" everyone keeps giving attention to only appears in the record as a question from an attorney. The basis of his question was never entered into the record -- and while a lot of interesting statistics referred to during the trial were redacted and thus never subject to analysis by the public, this assertion was just a question, and the attorney asking the question did not challenge the idea that there was no evidence on the record to support it.
This is very helpful. I'm a trial lawyer and will add that when examining an "expert" it is common to employ a hypothetical. "Ms. Smith, would it surprise you if.." That does not mean it is actually based on a fact. The method is a way of bracketing a range for the dispute and pinning down the testimony.
Good detective work Laura for ferreting this out. It was an unusual trial and any insight into publishing should be carefully parsed, as you’ve done. Even the judge was incredulous about PRH’s not showing a profit; she asked how they could stay in business.
Thanks for sharing, it's always great to have accurate sources! My question still stands, though... is there any way to get a reasonably accurate metric of book sales in the aggregate, for the whole market? Say, top 10% titles sell $X across all formats. Next 10% sell $Y across all formats. And so on.
I'm just trying to understand whether reasonable market-size data exists and is publicly available (and if so, where to find it) or not. The harder it is to estimate probabilities for performance, the harder it is to make decisions on investment. In the worst case, if there really is NO publicly-available decent data on market size and performance, then I will accept the need to wing it. I just like reducing the risk of my business decisions wherever I reasonably can. :-)
I’m a less-then-zero expert, but the long & spirited post by @Anna Sproul Latimer (her stack is called Glow in the Dark) talks alot about why it’s almost impossible to get that data. 😳😒
Certainly is encouraging and an eye-opener for someone like myself who has yet to snag an agent. I do get that writing a book is producing a product, and that doesn't offend me, nor take away from the artistry of what I'm doing. The more I know, the more likely I am to make a good decision in the long run, I'd say.
This is really helpful to understand how book sales works! Thank you for this. It especially makes a lot of sense that book sales would continue if the author publishes a second or third book, and without that long term view, it's hard to understand the numbers.
Very helpful, Kathleen. And congratulations on your MBA! What a lot of hard work!
THANK YOU for this!
Congratulations, Kathleen! As always, thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Congrats on getting your MBA!
As ever, you are so helpful to those of us in the trenches of writing. Thank you!!
When I first started out (my previous books were out in 2017 and 2019) it was talked about that an author needs about 10K+ for sales for the publisher to consider spending much on you for marketing for future books. What's your sense regarding that? I'm imaging that may have changed a bit with more print on demand?
Congrats on your MBA! And, thank you for this article! I'm not an author (or an aspiring one), but I host a book podcast and am fascinated with the behind the scenes of how the industry works. This is super helpful.
Enjoy a little recovery time after the MBA, you've done a ton of hard work. Note the PhD is strongly focused on research rather than teaching, which was a surprise to me and one of the reasons I put it off until later/maybe.
Where can I find good estimates of how many copies most books sell? You note that "no book sells 12 copies... that misinformation has been debunked many times" and yet that dataset is what I keep seeing. Case in point: Seth Godin's blog post from just this morning repeats this, with a graph explicitly showing that roughly 85% of books sell 12+ copies, but 15% _sell only one copy_.
Every book is different, so there is nothing in a data set that'll tell you the average sales of a book. There is no book in the world that only sells one copy. I am not a fan of Seth Godin because he is not always correct, and presents things without having worked in the industry. That graph is incorrect. Part of the problem is that people take information at face value, when people like me have been reading sales reports of books for years. Think about the economics of this: If 15% of books sold one copy, do you think as many publishers would be in business? They would not. The other thing is no one is differentiating formats, so it is assumed this is based on print figures, when in reality publishers look at sales across all formats. My issue is that people keep writing about book sales without contextualizing information, which is business school 101.
Kathleen just posted this in a separate post but I’ll copy it here for you: Publishers’ Marketplace posted this today as a detailed rebuttal to that ‘non-fact’:
That Stat Isn't A Stat
The discourse is once again reckoning all over the internet with a factoid from the PRH-S&S antitrust trial in 2022 that was not an established fact at all. The provocative Substack declaration -- "no one buys books" -- is based on an exchange during the trial that has been misunderstood from the start. The popular takeaway is a belief that the Department of Justice found that half of the new books published every year sell fewer than 12 copies in a year.
But going by the public record, that was never a fact introduced as evidence or supported by documentation during The Trial: It was a sensational bit of banter from a DOJ lawyer -- phrased as a question -- that was not recognized as valid by one of the two expert witnesses.
The exchange in question came on August 17, 2022, towards the end of The Trial. Government attorney Melvin Schwarz was questioning Penguin Random House's expert witness, Dr. Edward Snyder. Here is the citation from the transcript [p. 748 in our book]. We've added a few italics for emphasis.
Q: Do you have any idea about the--if you cut those 58,000 volumes a year, how many books--let's say half of those--the bottom half of those books, how many they sell in a given year. So the bottom half.
A: You're talking about the books--
Q: The 58,000 that are published, have you looked at all as to the cut of how many any given slice of the 58,000 sells in a given year?
A: I don't think so, because I also don't recall any evidence on how the books above $250,000 sell downstream. So you're asking--
Q: I was asking about all 58,000; that's ATS [Anticipated Top Sellers] and non-ATS.
A: I'm sorry, what's the question?
Q: Well, let me just ask it straight out. Would it surprise you to know that half of those 58,000 books sell fewer than one dozen books?
A: My book was in that category. Sorry.
Q: And if I had more time, I'd ask you to name the other 24,000 and a half there--excuse me, 29,000, there's my math. Would it surprise you to know that 90 percent sell fewer than 2,000 books?
A: I didn't study it.
Q: You just don't know?
A: I didn't study it. I don't think there's any evidence on the record. I would not be surprised.
So the "statistic" everyone keeps giving attention to only appears in the record as a question from an attorney. The basis of his question was never entered into the record -- and while a lot of interesting statistics referred to during the trial were redacted and thus never subject to analysis by the public, this assertion was just a question, and the attorney asking the question did not challenge the idea that there was no evidence on the record to support it.
THANK YOU
This is very helpful. I'm a trial lawyer and will add that when examining an "expert" it is common to employ a hypothetical. "Ms. Smith, would it surprise you if.." That does not mean it is actually based on a fact. The method is a way of bracketing a range for the dispute and pinning down the testimony.
Good detective work Laura for ferreting this out. It was an unusual trial and any insight into publishing should be carefully parsed, as you’ve done. Even the judge was incredulous about PRH’s not showing a profit; she asked how they could stay in business.
A bit of luck that I subscribe to PM, and not surprising that they moved quickly to emphasize accuracy in the face of persistent misinformation.
Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks for sharing, it's always great to have accurate sources! My question still stands, though... is there any way to get a reasonably accurate metric of book sales in the aggregate, for the whole market? Say, top 10% titles sell $X across all formats. Next 10% sell $Y across all formats. And so on.
I'm just trying to understand whether reasonable market-size data exists and is publicly available (and if so, where to find it) or not. The harder it is to estimate probabilities for performance, the harder it is to make decisions on investment. In the worst case, if there really is NO publicly-available decent data on market size and performance, then I will accept the need to wing it. I just like reducing the risk of my business decisions wherever I reasonably can. :-)
I’m a less-then-zero expert, but the long & spirited post by @Anna Sproul Latimer (her stack is called Glow in the Dark) talks alot about why it’s almost impossible to get that data. 😳😒
https://open.substack.com/pub/neonliterary/p/my-thoughts-on-that-no-one-buys-books?r=1ilc3q&utm_medium=ios
Helpful indeed- thank you!!
Such a helpful breakdown - THANK YOU!
Certainly is encouraging and an eye-opener for someone like myself who has yet to snag an agent. I do get that writing a book is producing a product, and that doesn't offend me, nor take away from the artistry of what I'm doing. The more I know, the more likely I am to make a good decision in the long run, I'd say.
Congratulations! Submitting is such great relief and accomplishment. I just found your newsletter and thank you for this incisive piece.
Thank you as always for explaining the publishing industry in such a clear and well-informed way that isn't a downer!
So helpful! thanks for explaining this so clearly for authors.
Helpful insights, as always!
This is really helpful to understand how book sales works! Thank you for this. It especially makes a lot of sense that book sales would continue if the author publishes a second or third book, and without that long term view, it's hard to understand the numbers.