Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies (2022)

<i>One 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><p>I didn&#x27;t see the &quot;dozen copies&quot; or &quot;less than 99 copies&quot; 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&#x27;s what you&#x27;d expect; it&#x27;s how a lot of businesses work.

(2022)<p>Related: &quot;No one buys books&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40119958">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40119958</a><p>&gt; Sales to libraries, for example, can be a significant portion of a book’s sales.<p>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 &quot;obscure&quot; 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&#x27;ve found some diamonds in the rough.<p>I suspect that public libraries are not actually &quot;stealing&quot; 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&#x27;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&#x27;t otherwise.

My 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&#x27;re trying to make a living out of authoring books, I would say that selling more than a thousand books is already extraordinary success.

from a comment under the article:<p>&gt; 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.<p>&gt; And less than 2% sold more than 50,000 copies.

I 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&#x27;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&#x27;ve never heard of because the publishing industry never marketed them.

Also consider how many audiobooks&#x2F;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.

Two book authors meet in a cafe:<p>- I bought the book you released last week, it was really entertaining read!<p>- Oh! It was you!

Short summary: internet meme statistics!<p>&gt; most traditionally published novels that you see on bookstore shelves or reviewed in newspapers sell several hundred to a few thousand copies across formats<p>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 <i>very</i> low ratio of book to person.

I&#x27;m writing a book on building and launching mobile apps end-to-end ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opinionatedlaunch.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opinionatedlaunch.com</a> ). I&#x27;m treating it like building and launching an app (Dogfooding my method! But for book-writing!). It&#x27;s got a website, a marketing plan, and even an affiliate system.<p>I took the self-publishing route because the book&#x27;s target market is niche; there&#x27;s only one CTO in a company. Someone I know went the publisher route, and I think he&#x27;s quite successful. I have only sold a dozen so far, but I&#x27;m pricing it accordingly.<p>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.

got lost in all the &quot;quotes&quot;<p>I think the main takeaway here is publishing a book isn&#x27;t the road to riches, though nor has it ever been

The fake reviews for unpopular books are pretty funny.<p>&gt; 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...<p>Not so coincidentally posted on the same day the book was published, with 5 stars.

From a different perspective but related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40119958">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40119958</a>

&gt; Take the statistic that most published books only sell 99 copies.<p>No wonder. 99 % in a book store is crap.<p>&quot;We can&#x27;t sell books&quot; say publishers<p>&quot;There is nothing to buy&quot; - me.

The distribution of income from books is quite similar to what we see in professional sport or entertainment - a small % take away nearly everything.

Argument for the article title: &quot;I’m pretty sure publishers would go out of business if 50% of their books sold less than 12 copies!&quot;

(2022)<p>Discussion then: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32794673">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32794673</a>

&gt;Some books are never published in print at all and exist only as ebooks and&#x2F;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.<p>Yeah that was the answer to my first question. If they&#x27;re only selling a few copies, no need to print many &#x2F; any.