Just a guess here, but I'd say if you're looking at print runs from big houses, I'd say a 25-30K first printing for a first novel is small; a 50-75K first printing is modest; a 100K+ first printing is large. You see well-established authors with 500K first printings, or 1 million first printings, but it's a pretty well-known fact that (a) those numbers are a bit manufactured and (b) they end up remaindered a lot of the time, as the object is to pack as many books in the bookstore as possible so the consumer thinks, "Wow, look at how many copies of that book there are on the table. That must be a major book."
Ummm, not too sure about your numbers here, especially on the low end. I agree that a hardcover printing of 100k+ for a first novel is "large"--many would say, "laughable", since these are the kinds of books and print runs where the big houses lose millions. (I have a post with
some recent figures on industry fuckups; they are instructive.)
There's been inflation since the 70s, no doubt, but Doubleday's first run of Stephen King's debut novel
Carrie at 30 k was considered jaw-dropping at the time. (And the advance on his novel was $2,500, about $8,600 in today's money. JK Rowling got a $6,000 advance for the first Harry Potter novel. And John Grisham's agent managed to place his first novel at a small press for a $15,000 advance--probably part of the reason they went belly-up.)
A 25-30 k printing
in hardback for a debut author is likely to be remaindered as well. It varies by genre, but in some areas 25 k sales for a debut novelist would be considered breathtaking. There are books with less sales than that which have made it onto the bestseller list (which is largely determined by timing in any case.)
Back to the original thread: Big presses increase your chances of becoming a bestseller. They also may increase your chances of becoming
persona non grata; they tend to give up on books and remainder them in minutes if they don't show legs. Like, dude, you are so
last week.
Small presses--MacAdam/Cage is a class example--tend to push their backlist on a long-term basis. Sometimes an author gets traction with a book that causes the backlist pick up as well, and overall sales of the sauthor's books rise. In other cases, like MacAdam/Cage's publication of Audrey Niffeneggar's
The Time-Traveler's Wife, they produce a major bestseller the first time out. But they do their calculations on a more long-term basis: they can't afford to print a zillion books one week and then pretend those same books (and their author) have leprosy the next week.
It's a gamble. But the fact is--and I'm willing to be educated on this point--I've never known an author who was offered the choice in the first place!
