# Is it TRUE that most published books SELL LESS THAN 100 Copies???



## Mikeyboy_esq (Feb 12, 2017)

*Is it TRUE what they say about most published books only selling less than 100 copies in its lifetime?* One book marketing consultant that I spoke to last month told me that something like 87% of all published books (including both traditionally published and self-published) sell less than 100 copies in its lifetime. But I have never seen any hard evidence that this is true.

As a side note, I was relieved that my new book finally sold its 100th copy this weekend (over its first 103 days)... not exactly on the NYT best seller list, but at least its on a steady pace and I finally broke a hundred. :mrgreen:


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## Jay Greenstein (Feb 12, 2017)

No, it's not true. For published books all but about 3% don't make back what it costs to being them to market. But that statement can be misleading, because it counts those that fell a dollar short, too. No publisher, after spending thousands on editing and polishing, and  many thousands more to put copies in the bookstores would stay in  business if they had to toss out 99 out of 100 copies.

It is true for self-published books, though, and that less than a hundred includes the copies bought by relatives and friends.


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## moderan (Feb 13, 2017)

> It is true for self-published books, though, and that less than a hundred includes the copies bought by relatives and friends.



I don't doubt this, but do you have data to support that?


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## Terry D (Feb 13, 2017)

There are many different numbers thrown around about sales figures for books. The numbers are very hard to get -- Simon & Schuster doesn't want Penguin or HarperCollins, or McMillan to know about their sales figures, and vice versa. I found a really interesting, and long, article here which talks about the numbers and some other stuff you might find interesting. Most of the numbers you read will be for print publications. Ebook publishers -- Amazon being the largest of course -- don't divulge sales figures at all, so anything you read about that will be pure speculation.


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## Sam (Feb 13, 2017)

Four hundred is the number routinely trotted out for the average number of sales per lifetime of a trade-published book, but I have no citations to corroborate that.


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## Mikeyboy_esq (Feb 13, 2017)

Terry D said:


> I found a really interesting, and long, article here which talks about the numbers and some other stuff you might find interesting. Most of the numbers you read will be for print publications. Ebook publishers -- Amazon being the largest of course -- don't divulge sales figures at all, so anything you read about that will be pure speculation.



Thanks Terry. That is a great article! It explains a lot (some of which I already knew and some I didn't).  Too bad it didn't have much details around my type of book (non-fiction that was self-published), but it was a very interesting read all the same. Thanks again!


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## TKent (Feb 13, 2017)

Great article. Had some info I had not heard before 



Terry D said:


> There are many different numbers thrown around about sales figures for books. The numbers are very hard to get -- Simon & Schuster doesn't want Penguin or HarperCollins, or McMillan to know about their sales figures, and vice versa. I found a really interesting, and long, article here which talks about the numbers and some other stuff you might find interesting. Most of the numbers you read will be for print publications. Ebook publishers -- Amazon being the largest of course -- don't divulge sales figures at all, so anything you read about that will be pure speculation.


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## moderan (Feb 13, 2017)

Terry D said:


> There are many different numbers thrown around  about sales figures for books. The numbers are very hard to get -- Simon  & Schuster doesn't want Penguin or HarperCollins, or McMillan to  know about their sales figures, and vice versa. I found a really  interesting, and long, article here  which talks about the numbers and some other stuff you might find  interesting. Most of the numbers you read will be for print  publications. Ebook publishers -- Amazon being the largest of course --  don't divulge sales figures at all, so anything you read about that will  be pure speculation.



Good answer, good article embedded.

Ebooks could be tracked by ISBN also, if an effort was made to do so. But the only real proof is in the monies received. It's all very weird. Direct sales aren't counted either, and that's about half of my total. I carry a copy of my book on my Kindle, which I take everywhere, along with the little usb cord. So if my doctor or a cabdriver or a random person in the checkout lane responds to the elevator pitch, I can take their money and deliver the product right then and there-that also gives the advantage of holding the product in their hand as I'll have them look at a random sample page or two.

Little bit of digression there...but I think it's pretty clear that the "less than 100 copies" sentiment expressed in the OP is largely disproven.


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## Mikeyboy_esq (Feb 13, 2017)

moderan said:


> Good answer, good article embedded.
> 
> Ebooks could be tracked by ISBN also, if an effort was made to do so. But the only real proof is in the monies received. It's all very weird. Direct sales aren't counted either, and that's about half of my total. I carry a copy of my book on my Kindle, which I take everywhere, along with the little usb cord. So if my doctor or a cabdriver or a random person in the checkout lane responds to the elevator pitch, I can take their money and deliver the product right then and there-that also gives the advantage of holding the product in their hand as I'll have them look at a random sample page or two.
> 
> Little bit of digression there...but I think it's pretty clear that the "less than 100 copies" sentiment expressed in the OP is largely disproven.



That is a clever way to pitch your book... never thought of carrying about a Kindle and selling directly from my website like that.

As far as the "less than 100 copies" statement goes, you might be right. However, I don't know that the above responses and the one article above are enough to totally disprove that statement in my mind.  I asked this same question on FB last night and have received several dozen responses so far... I'm getting about as many folks claiming to sell hundreds/thousands of their books as I am who claim to sell less than 50 copies (lifetime of the book).  So I'm still unsure of the accuracy of the statement. 

Seems to me that selling 100 books is a much taller task if you are talking about selling $30 hard cover books vs. someone selling 99 cent eBooks. Also, I'm sure traditionally published books typically sell a lot more copies than self-published for obvious reasons.  What I don't know is what % of all (recently published) books are traditionally published vs. self-published, what % are eBooks vs. print, what % are cheap books (less than $10) vs. more expensive (greater than $10), etc.  So in my mind, perhaps the "less than 100 copies" statement could possibly be accurate if it only applies to self-published print books. But that is just a wild guess on my part.


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## Jay Greenstein (Feb 13, 2017)

> I don't doubt this, but do you have data to support that?


Ask any agent. But that aside it's easy to verify for yourself. Pick any of the many publishers, like Lulu, who specialize in "free publishing." Go to their bookstore, pick a genre, and choose ten titles at random. Then look at them on Amazon, both for sales and content. I think you'll find that out of the ten you're lucky to find one whose Kindle sales ranking is below one million from being the top seller (if there's no ranking it hasn't sold enough to achieve a ranking). Then look at the writing and you'll see why.


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## moderan (Feb 14, 2017)

Mikeyboy_esq said:


> That is a clever way to pitch your book... never thought of carrying about a Kindle and selling directly from my website like that.
> 
> As far as the "less than 100 copies" statement goes, you might be right. However, I don't know that the above responses and the one article above are enough to totally disprove that statement in my mind.  I asked this same question on FB last night and have received several dozen responses so far... I'm getting about as many folks claiming to sell hundreds/thousands of their books as I am who claim to sell less than 50 copies (lifetime of the book).  So I'm still unsure of the accuracy of the statement.
> 
> Seems to me that selling 100 books is a much taller task if you are talking about selling $30 hard cover books vs. someone selling 99 cent eBooks. Also, I'm sure traditionally published books typically sell a lot more copies than self-published for obvious reasons.  What I don't know is what % of all (recently published) books are traditionally published vs. self-published, what % are eBooks vs. print, what % are cheap books (less than $10) vs. more expensive (greater than $10), etc.  So in my mind, perhaps the "less than 100 copies" statement could possibly be accurate if it only applies to self-published print books. But that is just a wild guess on my part.



Natural extrapolation of selling my band's cassettes out of the trunk 

I think it might be easier to sell a 30$ hardcover as there's such a stigma about the self-published ebook (as you intimated). I suppose I'll find out when the antho I'm editing finally gets funded and gets out, as there's a 40$ hardcover version planned. There's also publisher pushback -- one of my friends has an ebook that's higher-priced than the print version, because they want to move the bound copies first. Crazy. I usually get both, as turning on the light at night wakes me up completely, where the glow from the Kindle or Paperwhite don't. Quite a few others attest to having the same process -- reading late at night being a hallmark of the weird fiction community in general.
TBH-I don't really care about other people's sales. I don't think the data transfers. But it's interesting in the abstract.


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## who me? (May 14, 2017)

Mikeyboy_esq said:


> *Is it TRUE what they say about most published books only selling less than 100 copies in its lifetime?* One book marketing consultant that I spoke to last month told me that something like 87% of all published books (including both traditionally published and self-published) sell less than 100 copies in its lifetime. But I have never seen any hard evidence that this is true.
> 
> As a side note, I was relieved that my new book finally sold its 100th copy this weekend (over its first 103 days)... not exactly on the NYT best seller list, but at least its on a steady pace and I finally broke a hundred. :mrgreen:


===============

it is a very long tailed phenomenon

90% of books dont sell 5 copies but if you count kindle it may be 30 copies now
some sell zero 
a few sell millions
some sell moderate numbers in thousands
but the average and median are closer to 100 or less


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