Nobody buys books

[Frank Cox]

https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books

50% of newly published books sell less than a dozen copies. Who'da thunk it?

in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.

Q. Do you know approximately how many authors there are across the industry with 500,000 units or more during this four-year period?

A. My understanding is that it was about 50.

Q. 50 authors across the publishing industry who during this four-year period sold more than 500,000 units in a single year?

A. Yes.

—

Madeline Mcintosh
, CEO, Penguin Random House US

The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Look at how many listen to them while driving or at home... That may (or may not) offer some insight. These days even Spotify has books to listen to, plus used book stores, like this one a half mile from me..

[Martin McCaffery]

A good but frightening summary of the article"

Here’s the general picture:

(1) The overwhelming majority of books published by major publishing houses generate little or no money for anyone, and in particular their authors.

(2) Relatedly, books that sell more than [incredibly depressing number] copies are very rare. The DOJ collected data on more than 58,000 titles published in a year, and found that 90% sold less than 2,000 copies, and that the median number of sales was . . . twelve.

(3) The overwhelming bulk of book sales come from three classes of writers (or “writers”): celebrities, franchise authors (Stephen King, John Grisham, Colleen Hoover etc.,) and the backlist, that is, The Lord of the Rings, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the Bible, etc. If you’re not an author who is already in one of these three categories, your chances of making a living by publishing books are infinitesimal.

(4) The big publishing houses now spend almost all their money on a tiny number of gigantic advances. Even authors who get these get almost no money spent on publicity efforts by their publishers, because the giant advances go to people with a million TikTok followers (see point #3).

(5) The Obamas sell so many books that they had to be taken out of the data analysis as distorting outliers.

(6) If/when book publishing goes to a Netflix/Spotify subscription model, where you pay $10 a month to read as many books as you want, traditional publishing will be destroyed, since 20% of book buyers spend 80% of the money spent on books (this is the ratio for basically everything in the universe, as I believe Pareto or some other annoying economist pointed out).

(7) It’s not unusual for a celebrity author to get a million dollar advance and then put their name on a book that doesn’t sell any copies. Big publishing is a boom or bust/lottery ticket/VC investment model, which is increasingly untenable. (Funny not like a clown side note: Marie Kondo published a book on how to keep your office tidy. In March 2020).

the median number of sales was . . . twelve.!?!?

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com...-of-the-author

[Mike Blakesley]

It used to be that any trip to (nearby large city) Billings always included a stop at the Barnes and Noble and/or Waldenbooks, where I would almost always come out with at least two or three books. The Waldenbooks closed many years ago, and the Barnes and Noble is still there, but I haven't been in there in years. I'm surprised it's still there, but it is. I don't really read that many books anymore either, sadly. Just another of the many things to blame on the internet, I guess.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Mike... I used to stop at that Barnes & Noble just about every trip up there. There was not one in Salt Lake Silly.

[Frank Cox]

I read books all the time - it's what I do when I'm sitting in the lobby while the show is running if nothing else.

However, all of my books are now ebook files on my computers and I don't use paper books any more. Among other things, ebooks are handy since the computer holds the book for you and you can just sit back and read.

And my entire library takes up literally no space at all any more.

Most of what I read tends to be older stuff as well. Now that any idiot can self-publish a book for approximately no cost, a lot of those idiots are self-publishing their books.

If nothing else, publishing houses and their editors acted as a kind of filter so any book in print during, say, the 70's, probably had at least a minimal literary value. Now that's more-or-less gone.

One other thing that I've noticed is that technical manuals, the ten pound 1500 page doorstops, have pretty much disappeared. I suspect the market for them has dried up because everyone just uses google and stackexchange (and now chatgpt I guess) to find out how a bubble sort works and there's no need to check the index and find page 557 in the manual any more.

So the end result is a lot of does get published now is a fairly low quality because the people who really know how to write and know their subject matter can no longer sell enough books to make it worth their time to write them.

[Gordon McLeod]

Look at how many listen to them while driving or at home... That may (or may not) offer some insight. These days even Spotify has books to listen to, plus used book stores, like this one a half mile from me..

Wish that used book store was near me

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Come on down here! You can stay at my place. There are three of those book stores, but the next closest one is in Chattanooga. However, there are other used book stores, including the "Dangerous Book Store" in Franklin which is also used books.

[Leo Enticknap]

The Obamas sell so many books that they had to be taken out of the data analysis as distorting outliers.

Prince Harry can likely join them, too. I saw a report last summer that the authorities in a Costa del Hell resort town beloved of British tourists had to beg them not to leave copies of his infamous, ghost-written autobiog abandoned on the beach. This was after they had to rent a dumpster to dispose of them all!

Presumably thousands of holidaymakers blew GBP30 or so on the tome after a beverage or three and just before boarding their Ryanair 737. Once on the beach, they turned straight to the section in which Prince Harry boasts about having consumed every illicit substance you've heard of and some you haven't, figured out that the rest of the book was boring garbage, and left it on the beach. Still, the royalties he made should keep Meghan in fancy jam jars for a while.

[Barry Floyd]

I read books all the time - it's what I do when I'm sitting in the lobby while the show is running if nothing else.

However, all of my books are now ebook files on my computers and I don't use paper books any more. Among other things, ebooks are handy since the computer holds the book for you and you can just sit back and read.

And my entire library takes up literally no space at all any more.

Most of what I read tends to be older stuff as well. Now that any idiot can self-publish a book for approximately no cost, a lot of those idiots are self-publishing their books.

If nothing else, publishing houses and their editors acted as a kind of filter so any book in print during, say, the 70's, probably had at least a minimal literary value. Now that's more-or-less gone.

One other thing that I've noticed is that technical manuals, the ten pound 1500 page doorstops, have pretty much disappeared. I suspect the market for them has dried up because everyone just uses google and stackexchange (and now chatgpt I guess) to find out how a bubble sort works and there's no need to check the index and find page 557 in the manual any more.

So the end result is a lot of does get published now is a fairly low quality because the people who really know how to write and know their subject matter can no longer sell enough books to make it worth their time to write them.

I'd much rather have a hard copy printed manual when working on my cars. When I rebuilt my Delorean, the printed parts manual and the technical shop manual were invaluable when trying to figure out what went where.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I bought and finished 3-Body Problem Set (and Wandering Earth) right before projecting the premiere... wonder which category of sales numbers those fall into.

[Frank Cox]

A workshop is one use case where a printed manual is superior to a pdf file. You won't get grease on your tablet or computer and if you drop the manual on the floor it's probably not a big deal.

[Leo Enticknap]

Something that would be cool is an app that displays a music score, "listens" to it being performed, and processes from what it hears through the microphone to turn the page at the right moment. It would be of limited use to me, because my sight reading is bad enough that I only use a score during the process of learning a piece and committing it to memory. But for better sight readers there are many, not very well edited organ scores that put the page turn at a point when both hands (and sometimes both feet too, though obviously they wouldn't be much use for turning a page!) are in use and around the time of registration changes, meaning that playing in real time from them is impossible without an assistant to turn pages.

[Frank Cox]

Mobilesheets (which I use) and I think Forscore (which I don't know much about) can use the camera in your tablet to turn the page. You can choose a gesture like smile, turn your head, raise your eyebrows (really!) and turn the page without having to take your hands off of the keyboard.

And they also work with footpedals like the Pageflip, of course.

Personally, I just touch the screen to turn the page since I don't perform and pausing for a moment to turn the page isn't a big deal.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Page turning innovations intended for dexterity impaired people apparently are also useful for greasy handed mechanics, or pianists/organists, or orchestra musicians. ;-)