I'm so happy you wrote this counter-piece. I read @kathleenschmidt's great response to that other post and basically agreed with everything she said, and was hoping for a better breakdown of what was so incredibly off about it—and here you are. It presents to us some of pitfalls of Substack, too, which is that everyone is a reporter(!), and there's no fact-checking(!). There was so much missing context, too, like the fact that book publishing is a giant ecosystem with the Big Five, yes, but also indies, and hybrids, and self-published authors. And what did any of it have to do with people not buying books? I'm a hybrid book publisher, and people are not only buying our books; they're buying books that big houses passed on because the Big Five didn't think these titles had a big enough readership. We are not aspiring to sell even 10,000 copies. That would be awesome, but our average sales are more like 1000-4000 per title, and we are still a $1 million dollar publisher. There is much about book publishing that people do not understand. It takes work to get under the hood. The DOJ didn't get it. And that other piece certainly got it wrong. Grateful for your work, Lincoln!
Thanks for this more nuanced analysis. I’ve been in the business of writing since the 1970s so I can remember the good old days of mass market paperbacks. One of my novels sold 340,000 copies in paperback. That would be considered an astonishing number these days. But of course, back then we didn’t have all the other temptations screaming to tablets to smart phones , etc.
Great news, but I could have proven this myself, because I know I buy about a billion books a year. These statistics can't include used books (pre-owned) and library borrowing.
I appreciate your dive into reality-based sales numbers. What disturbed me about that Substack post, though, was the underlying attitude/logic: authors with pre-existing platforms (celebrities, the "queen of TikTok," etc.) are valuable because of those platforms, and authors without pre-existing platforms are a roll of the dice. There's no discussion by any of these publishing execs about *making* books succeed. The CEO of Penguin Random House literally describes his role as that of an angel investor. But he's not an angel investor -- he's the CEO!
I'm not sure what my conclusion is from this. Self-publishing seems even harder to make work especially for literary writers. But it also strikes me as bananas that publishers are so willing to see the failure of their own products as something totally beyond their control. If authors are going to get all the responsibility and blame, they should get a higher percentage of the profits too.
Thanks for more excellent number crunching, and I'm both surprised and delighted that book sales and movie ticket sales are not far apart. That gives me hope! Likewise, I'm heartened that 50% of books may make money--I've often told students/friends it's much less--but that was my error in equating "making money" and "earning out."
The main thing that struck me about Griffin's article was her baseline assumptions about what # of book sales is OK versus shockingly bad. One of my mentors told me long ago that 4,000-7,000* copies=good sales for a literary novel and anything over 7K is great. (You mentioned 5K, Lincoln. Similar thinking.) Philip Roth once said that there are about 4,000 serious readers in the country and if you managed to sell a book to all of them, congrats! When a person who doesn't write books or work in publishing seems to think that 75,000 books is basically nothing, we're having a communication (and math) problem. Those of us who write for a living (or partial living) would be thrilled to sell anything above, say, 20,000-30,000 books (number pulled from my hat).
*I've long assumed this is hardcover copies, but I've also been told that full price ebooks (as versus the wonderful sale price ebooks, which can produce some nice royalty surprise checks) get included in that figure. Another source of confusion!
I am a bestselling author. I wrote 7 of my 9 published novels while working a full time job. That money helped pay for vacations, dentists, saving for kids tuition, and many more things. For my last two novels I've become a full time freelance writer. The thing is, even when writing is not someone's full-time job, it can provide income. It was a trickle when I was selling short stories to anthologies, and much more once I published novels.
It was also an easier side occupation for me than knitting or baking pies. I know people who do that to make extra money. They also like doing that, but I suspect they're not about to open a Pie restaurant, though if they did I'd be there.
My point is, there is money in books. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, and you don't need to be Kim Kardashian to make a buck selling books. I certainly am no celebrity in TikTok.
This was such an insightful read, thank you! The distinction between "earning out an advance" and "profitable book" was especially interesting.
One other aspect of Elle's post that I'd be curious for your thoughts on…she mentions a few times that writers with large, preexisting platforms (e.g. on Instagram or Tiktok) have a huge marketing and sales advantage, and many could still sell thousands of books without a Big 5 publisher. One possible conclusion you could draw from this is that trad publishing is dying, it's not a useful thing to aspire to—writers should be building their own platforms instead. But I'm really curious about your take for trad publishing's advantages for small-to-medium writers. I suspect many writers don't want to and wouldn't be very good at building a platform on their own, and people like Colleen Hoover and Brandon Sanderson are massive, massive outliers. And that form of platform-building may be well-suited to some genres but not others…I can't think of that many literary fiction novels that "broke out" in some way because of the writer's preexisting platform! Many of those seem to rely on a Big 5 or reputable small press (e.g. Fitzcarraldo, Galley Beggar in the UK; New Directions, Graywolf in the US) to gain an audience.
"So, if a book sells one million print copies then the publisher makes 10 million, with 1 million going toward earning out the author’s advance. If the publisher paid an advance of 3 million, the advance hasn’t earned out… but the publisher still made 7 million."
I suppose this is true if you don't include the cost to produce the book, print the book and ship the book.
As someone who runs a small press I sure wish margins looked like this!
*ahem* The claim that people don't buy books is always funny to me, a person regularly trying to figure out how to make space on my bookshelves/add more bookshelves for the books I decide are worth buying, who always puts in requests for the library to buy certain books, which they do about half the time. I alone am buying at least fifty books a year, closer to 80 when counting the library requests...and that's just what I buy for myself. Nevermind gifting books or getting a copy of a book i liked to donate to Little Free Libraries.
One thing I pointed out in my own response is that this idea that backlist sales aren't real sales, are something other than book sales, is totally bizarre. Every book on the backlist was once a new book! Books that came out a few short years ago are backlist books! Living authors make their living off of the backlist. Just very strange all around.
Anecdotal evidence leaves a more powerful impression.
For example.
I walked into a book store the other day and looked for current title listings. It was the wrong bookstore. The manager said, they are discount book store. When I asked does she compete with other book stores ? She said no, her business is to buy bulk, by the truck load, remaindered books - books that could not be sold and then tries to sell them at huge markdowns.
Sometimes she packages and boxes up mystery bundles to sell for $50 to $100 to move the stock; she is part of a chain -- of remaindered books. I noted the entire store is filled with so many fiction and non fiction author' books that performed poorly.
So what do we to make of all this ? Publishing is a business and we know what is done with poor performing books - offloaded in bulk to recuperate some sunk costs - is this data recorded; it is sale, though different ?
You feel sorry for all those authors who spent so many hours writing these books and that failed to sell. So, was the 12 month effort, or longer, to write their book worth it ?
Thanks so much for this analysis, Lincoln. Much appreciated. One chart I found very over-padded by Publishing was Advances. While the top categories certainly would get those royal numbers, I know of zero authors (including myself) in the lower rungs who got 50k-plus for the expected sale of only several thousand copies. If only that were true!
I'm so happy you wrote this counter-piece. I read @kathleenschmidt's great response to that other post and basically agreed with everything she said, and was hoping for a better breakdown of what was so incredibly off about it—and here you are. It presents to us some of pitfalls of Substack, too, which is that everyone is a reporter(!), and there's no fact-checking(!). There was so much missing context, too, like the fact that book publishing is a giant ecosystem with the Big Five, yes, but also indies, and hybrids, and self-published authors. And what did any of it have to do with people not buying books? I'm a hybrid book publisher, and people are not only buying our books; they're buying books that big houses passed on because the Big Five didn't think these titles had a big enough readership. We are not aspiring to sell even 10,000 copies. That would be awesome, but our average sales are more like 1000-4000 per title, and we are still a $1 million dollar publisher. There is much about book publishing that people do not understand. It takes work to get under the hood. The DOJ didn't get it. And that other piece certainly got it wrong. Grateful for your work, Lincoln!
Thanks for this more nuanced analysis. I’ve been in the business of writing since the 1970s so I can remember the good old days of mass market paperbacks. One of my novels sold 340,000 copies in paperback. That would be considered an astonishing number these days. But of course, back then we didn’t have all the other temptations screaming to tablets to smart phones , etc.
Great news, but I could have proven this myself, because I know I buy about a billion books a year. These statistics can't include used books (pre-owned) and library borrowing.
I appreciate your dive into reality-based sales numbers. What disturbed me about that Substack post, though, was the underlying attitude/logic: authors with pre-existing platforms (celebrities, the "queen of TikTok," etc.) are valuable because of those platforms, and authors without pre-existing platforms are a roll of the dice. There's no discussion by any of these publishing execs about *making* books succeed. The CEO of Penguin Random House literally describes his role as that of an angel investor. But he's not an angel investor -- he's the CEO!
I'm not sure what my conclusion is from this. Self-publishing seems even harder to make work especially for literary writers. But it also strikes me as bananas that publishers are so willing to see the failure of their own products as something totally beyond their control. If authors are going to get all the responsibility and blame, they should get a higher percentage of the profits too.
Thanks for more excellent number crunching, and I'm both surprised and delighted that book sales and movie ticket sales are not far apart. That gives me hope! Likewise, I'm heartened that 50% of books may make money--I've often told students/friends it's much less--but that was my error in equating "making money" and "earning out."
The main thing that struck me about Griffin's article was her baseline assumptions about what # of book sales is OK versus shockingly bad. One of my mentors told me long ago that 4,000-7,000* copies=good sales for a literary novel and anything over 7K is great. (You mentioned 5K, Lincoln. Similar thinking.) Philip Roth once said that there are about 4,000 serious readers in the country and if you managed to sell a book to all of them, congrats! When a person who doesn't write books or work in publishing seems to think that 75,000 books is basically nothing, we're having a communication (and math) problem. Those of us who write for a living (or partial living) would be thrilled to sell anything above, say, 20,000-30,000 books (number pulled from my hat).
*I've long assumed this is hardcover copies, but I've also been told that full price ebooks (as versus the wonderful sale price ebooks, which can produce some nice royalty surprise checks) get included in that figure. Another source of confusion!
I am a bestselling author. I wrote 7 of my 9 published novels while working a full time job. That money helped pay for vacations, dentists, saving for kids tuition, and many more things. For my last two novels I've become a full time freelance writer. The thing is, even when writing is not someone's full-time job, it can provide income. It was a trickle when I was selling short stories to anthologies, and much more once I published novels.
It was also an easier side occupation for me than knitting or baking pies. I know people who do that to make extra money. They also like doing that, but I suspect they're not about to open a Pie restaurant, though if they did I'd be there.
My point is, there is money in books. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, and you don't need to be Kim Kardashian to make a buck selling books. I certainly am no celebrity in TikTok.
Great post, Lincoln. Appreciate the nuance and careful (and non-inflammatory) dissection.
This was such an insightful read, thank you! The distinction between "earning out an advance" and "profitable book" was especially interesting.
One other aspect of Elle's post that I'd be curious for your thoughts on…she mentions a few times that writers with large, preexisting platforms (e.g. on Instagram or Tiktok) have a huge marketing and sales advantage, and many could still sell thousands of books without a Big 5 publisher. One possible conclusion you could draw from this is that trad publishing is dying, it's not a useful thing to aspire to—writers should be building their own platforms instead. But I'm really curious about your take for trad publishing's advantages for small-to-medium writers. I suspect many writers don't want to and wouldn't be very good at building a platform on their own, and people like Colleen Hoover and Brandon Sanderson are massive, massive outliers. And that form of platform-building may be well-suited to some genres but not others…I can't think of that many literary fiction novels that "broke out" in some way because of the writer's preexisting platform! Many of those seem to rely on a Big 5 or reputable small press (e.g. Fitzcarraldo, Galley Beggar in the UK; New Directions, Graywolf in the US) to gain an audience.
"So, if a book sells one million print copies then the publisher makes 10 million, with 1 million going toward earning out the author’s advance. If the publisher paid an advance of 3 million, the advance hasn’t earned out… but the publisher still made 7 million."
I suppose this is true if you don't include the cost to produce the book, print the book and ship the book.
As someone who runs a small press I sure wish margins looked like this!
*ahem* The claim that people don't buy books is always funny to me, a person regularly trying to figure out how to make space on my bookshelves/add more bookshelves for the books I decide are worth buying, who always puts in requests for the library to buy certain books, which they do about half the time. I alone am buying at least fifty books a year, closer to 80 when counting the library requests...and that's just what I buy for myself. Nevermind gifting books or getting a copy of a book i liked to donate to Little Free Libraries.
One thing I pointed out in my own response is that this idea that backlist sales aren't real sales, are something other than book sales, is totally bizarre. Every book on the backlist was once a new book! Books that came out a few short years ago are backlist books! Living authors make their living off of the backlist. Just very strange all around.
Here is a recent experience.
Anecdotal evidence leaves a more powerful impression.
For example.
I walked into a book store the other day and looked for current title listings. It was the wrong bookstore. The manager said, they are discount book store. When I asked does she compete with other book stores ? She said no, her business is to buy bulk, by the truck load, remaindered books - books that could not be sold and then tries to sell them at huge markdowns.
Sometimes she packages and boxes up mystery bundles to sell for $50 to $100 to move the stock; she is part of a chain -- of remaindered books. I noted the entire store is filled with so many fiction and non fiction author' books that performed poorly.
So what do we to make of all this ? Publishing is a business and we know what is done with poor performing books - offloaded in bulk to recuperate some sunk costs - is this data recorded; it is sale, though different ?
You feel sorry for all those authors who spent so many hours writing these books and that failed to sell. So, was the 12 month effort, or longer, to write their book worth it ?
A lost opportunity cost to learn another skill ?
Thanks so much for this analysis, Lincoln. Much appreciated. One chart I found very over-padded by Publishing was Advances. While the top categories certainly would get those royal numbers, I know of zero authors (including myself) in the lower rungs who got 50k-plus for the expected sale of only several thousand copies. If only that were true!
.... so many numbers... make my head spin !
Thank you! Well done.
What a really interesting and helpful article - thank you.