There always seem to be naysayers and doomsayers convinced that fiction is dead, the novel dead, whatever. So I thought I'd post some interesting data.
I am looking at the Bookscan bestseller list for 6/16/07 -- the most recent list I have. These are actual sales figures, not print runs, or orders, or the sort of mysterious number-crunching the New York Times seems to do in order to compile its list. These are into-the-hands-of-consumers sales.
Bookscan tracks in several categories, and in several ways. They have current and previous week's ranking, plus actual sales numbers for each week, and finish with Year to Date sales numbers.
There are several categories for the list, including Overall, Adult Fiction, Mass Market Fiction, and so on. Since we're in the Writing Novels forum, I'll concentrate on that.
On the Adult Fiction Bestseller list, which goes to #100 (only 5 are new titles with fewer than 2 weeks of sales), I find the following:
95 titles (out of 100!) have year-to-date sales of over 10,000 copies
49 titles have YTD sales of over 50,000 copies
31 titles have YTD sales of over 100,000 copies
2 titles have YTD sales of nearly half a million copies
1 title has YTD sales of over half a million copies
And, I remind you, it's only June.
These are virtually all books published by major publishers; I don't see a self-pub, vanity-pub, e-pub-only, or POD publisher with even a single title listed.
On the Bookscan Mass Market Fiction Bestseller list (which goes to #50, and on this particular list only one title is new, so every other book is showing a minimum of two weeks on sale):
49 titles have YTD sales of over 10,000 copies
16 titles have YTD sales of over 50,000 copies
10 titles have YTD sales of over 100,000 copies
2 titles have YTD sales of over 200,000 copies
Just some numbers to chew on.
I am looking at the Bookscan bestseller list for 6/16/07 -- the most recent list I have. These are actual sales figures, not print runs, or orders, or the sort of mysterious number-crunching the New York Times seems to do in order to compile its list. These are into-the-hands-of-consumers sales.
Bookscan tracks in several categories, and in several ways. They have current and previous week's ranking, plus actual sales numbers for each week, and finish with Year to Date sales numbers.
There are several categories for the list, including Overall, Adult Fiction, Mass Market Fiction, and so on. Since we're in the Writing Novels forum, I'll concentrate on that.
On the Adult Fiction Bestseller list, which goes to #100 (only 5 are new titles with fewer than 2 weeks of sales), I find the following:
95 titles (out of 100!) have year-to-date sales of over 10,000 copies
49 titles have YTD sales of over 50,000 copies
31 titles have YTD sales of over 100,000 copies
2 titles have YTD sales of nearly half a million copies
1 title has YTD sales of over half a million copies
And, I remind you, it's only June.
These are virtually all books published by major publishers; I don't see a self-pub, vanity-pub, e-pub-only, or POD publisher with even a single title listed.
On the Bookscan Mass Market Fiction Bestseller list (which goes to #50, and on this particular list only one title is new, so every other book is showing a minimum of two weeks on sale):
49 titles have YTD sales of over 10,000 copies
16 titles have YTD sales of over 50,000 copies
10 titles have YTD sales of over 100,000 copies
2 titles have YTD sales of over 200,000 copies
Just some numbers to chew on.
