Nobody Sells “Millions of Copies”
Before I became an author myself, I held an inflated estimate of the number of copies the typical book (bestselling or otherwise) sold. I also thought the author earned more per book than he really does. In my experience, the general public shares the misconceptions I once held.
Now for the terrible truth.
Books, says one of my publishers, are some of the hardest things in the world to sell. Nonfiction books are even worse, of course — next to no one, relatively speaking, reads nonfiction. It doesn’t help that there were 195,000 distinct titles published in 2005 alone (the latest statistic of which I am aware). I happen to know of a major publisher all readers of this blog have heard of, which (at the time I heard the statistic) had published 3000 different books in one year. How many of those sold more than 2000 copies? About 200.
Books do not sell.
***So much for a publisher's contribution. My book, without a publisher, would rank as a top seller for a publisher, and a perennial seller being available on Amazon.com for 8 years now.***
On top of that, an author with a trade publisher typically earns 15% of the cover price of a hardcover. Common contractual terms run as follows: 10% for the first 5000 copies, 12.5% for the next 5,000, and15% for all copies thereafter. Paperback editions earn the author 7.5% of the hardcover price. That’s before taxes, though one small consolation is that royalty income is not subject to self-employment tax. It’s also before any agency fees — your literary agent, if you have one, will typically earn 15%. Mine, who has helped me with several of my titles, earned every penny, but it’s still a deduction from your income.
***If you build your own market through teaching, you need no literary agent... so you keep that money.***
University and academic presses are typically less generous. Sometimes you are actually expected to prepare your own index, if you don’t want to be docked to have one of their in-house people perform that service. I did the indexes for a couple of my early titles. It is an unspeakable task. Royalties, moreover, typically don’t exceed 10 percent, and usually operate on a sliding scale beginning with 5 percent.
It’s embarrassing to recall, but I remember thinking The Church Confronts Modernity, my book with Columbia University Press, would sell around 10,000-20,000 copies! After all, I thought, at least that many people would be interested in the subject matter it deals with, so of course it’ll sell that many. Ahem.
***Yes, that many that are interested, but never that many that will buy. It is a fascinating ongoing topic, and it would sell perennially if a course were offered on the theme. To would be teachers: Prof. Woods is too busy to stake out a claim on this topic on the internet. Do not be discouraged that he has a book, and a name. Given his seminal work in this area, a young scholar can come in with confidence and build a franchise on one's own on the topic, on the web. I bet Prof. Woods would give his blessing, if not lend a hand occassionally. Competition means "to strive with," not "to fight with."***
My most successful book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004), has sold about 170,000 copies so far. That is a veritable miracle for an unknown author with little access to mass media. But it’s well below what most people assume I have sold.
***A gold record means a million dollars in sales. A platinum record means a million copies sold. If Prof. Woods is getting a royalty of $1.50 a copy, that's a quarter million he earned. Nothing to sniff at... get excited about smaller numbers!***
Not long ago, someone referred matter-of-factly to the “millions of copies” of Meltdown I must have sold. Would that it were so. No one sells millions of copies of a nonfiction title, with a few exceedingly rare exceptions: (1) people with television or radio talk shows, who can promote their books before a huge audience every day; (2) authors whose books are featured on Oprah; and (3) the occasional outlier with a clever or quirky idea, and that attracts a lot of media.
*** As I lay out in my book PERISH YOUR PUBLISHER, returns take those million dollar sales reports down to about half. the cost is deducted from commissions, and a Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh could care less about any loss on the way to the renown of being a million-selling author, the tax write-off alone is gold. A sitting on Oprah means massive demand for a short time. Ramping up to sell a few million copies is risky business, and just how many will you sell? One million? Three million? Wrong guesses cost you. A visit on Oprah may be exciting, but it is likely to be financially disastrous.***
Even with all the attention Meltdown got, it sold about 55,000 copies. This is astonishingly low to most people, particularly given the ten weeks it spent on the New York Times bestseller list. But the publishing world, which knows the dreary nonfiction sales figures all too well, was envious of my publisher for having such a big hit during a depressed period for publishing.
***If Woods makes $2.50 a copy royalty on Meltdown, the ten weeks on the best seller list earned him about $140,000. If he had perished his publisher, he would have earned more in the line of $660,000. Now this would have taken a bit of packing and shipping on his part, or he could have farmed it out for under $60,000, netting him about a half million more than he has earned.***
Having been doing this for a number of years now, I’ve come to expect sales to be at about this level. I realize it’s extremely difficult to sell in excess of 50,000 copies of a nonfiction title, which I have so far managed to do three times (my book on the Catholic Church and Western civilization being the third). But when you tell people the real figures, they are (understandably) stunned and disappointed. It’s like telling a relative at a family cookout that you were just accepted at the University of Pennsylvania or the University of Chicago. Someone in the know realizes you’ve just reached a great milestone. Many average people, on the other hand, figure you just got accepted at a run-of-the-mill school.
***And some of the greats in Economics have been working out of UN Las Vegas, and St. Augustine was Bishop of Hippo, something akin to being Bishop of Rochester. Don't take this simile to heart, wherever you are, you can stake out your claim on the internet.***
Even though nonfiction titles sell fewer copies than you may have thought, they are not for that reason a waste of time, particularly if you derive intellectual pleasure, as I do, from the challenge that comes with writing them. Writing a book (with a major publisher) can open major print, radio, and television outlets to you and your ideas, thereby giving you a chance to spread your message to a wider audience than just the reading public. Authors receive speaking invitations that give them the opportunity to reach a broader audience still, while adding to their (erratic) income. And so on.
*** Teaching on the net and face to face seminars, you'll get all the exposure you can stand, and get paid a $100 an hour to do it. You not missing anything missing the media exposure publishers can get you.***
If you want to write a book, then, just be sure to go into it with your eyes open. Understand that the chances you will become rich as a nonfiction author are slim to none. But writing a book brings satisfactions other than money, and if those are worth the expenditure of time that your project will demand, then by all means get to work.
**Indeed, it is about lifestyle, not money. the money will follow.***
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