Book Sales
By Jerry D. Simmons | November 8th, 2006 | 1 Comment » (Click to add yours!)

A good friend of mine who happens to be a wonderful writer, is a person who also keeps me updated on publishing news around the world, forwarded the following numbers about book sales in the United States in 2004.

These figures came from Nielsen BookScan, which is the most recognizable sales reporting company for New York publishers. BookScan tracked book sales for 1.2 million titles, for all of 2004 and here is what they found:

Keep in mind that these numbers do not represent the vast majority of independent author sales. Those self-published or author originated titles that are estimated to run close to 200,000 separate titles per calendar year and are not accounted for in these statistics. Nor does every major retail bookseller report sales to BookScan, so some of the data will have been estimated. Regardless, I have no reason to suspect these results.

What does this say to an author? That it is easy to get published but difficult to sell books. There has to be a new way of looking at and thinking about–how to market and sell books.

These numbers were taken from the blog at http://girlondemand.blogspot.com posted Friday November 3, 2006.

 

One Response to “Book Sales”

  1. how to make logo says:
    June 11, 2010 at 6:38 pm

    Hi – I would like to say thank you for an interesting post about a subject I have had an interest in for a while now. I have been lurking and reading the comments avidly so just wanted to express my thanks for providing me with some very good reading material. I look forward to more, and taking a more proactive part in the discussions here, whilst learning too!!

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