Where to find book sales for proposal

[susangpyp]

I've researched this before but I can never seem to find how to do this. I am looking for the sales for a certain type of book. I don't want the Amazon numbers because they don't fully represent the sales. Is there a surefire place to get the number of sales for a book title even if it's twenty years old? I know this is tough to get but I have to have some idea for this particular proposal. Thanks!

[Lauri B]

Unfortunately, no. There is no one place that will give you a definitive number of sales. Bookscan is available to publishers and others through subscription only, and even those numbers represent only chains and some independents.

[susangpyp]

Thanks. I've looked at BookScan for number of titles of this particular type of book and that was very helpful. I also know the name of a book and the sales its generated over the last few years but it's 20 years old. So even multiplying isn't going to help because I'm sure it did better earlier on. This is so frustrating!!!

[DerekJager]

Actually, I don't think the proposal needs to mention the number of books sold.

In my proposal, I mentioned, "Readers who purchased best selling novels such as X, Y and Z will find my book of similar interest because of..."

The agent/editor will make the leap for you, so keep it general but specific as to your audience, the marketing, et al.

[June Casagrande]

What Derek and Lauri said.

There's a reason those numbers are hard to find: Publishers don't want you to find them. Whoever's reading your proposal will understand that.

[Codger]

What Derek and Lauri said.

There's a reason those numbers are hard to find: Publishers don't want you to find them. Whoever's reading your proposal will understand that.

Bingo!

You beat me to it.

[veinglory]

For a proposal they would want a general charactersiation of sales at best--and in fact if the comparision is a good one they should recognise the title, author or press themselves and know roughly what the sales would have been.

But for a 20 year old book the sales would not really equate well in amount or the degree to which that is an endorsement (given changes in the market)?