Self Help Statistics

Hello averagegirl, welcome to AW!

I'm no expert, but until one comes along, we can do the "blind leading the blind" thing

In the books I have read about this...one suggested that you can use the Amazon book ranking. For example

Life Code: New Rules for Winning in the Real World by Phil McGraw

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: Bird Street Books; 1ST edition (February 12, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0985462736
• ISBN-13: 978-0985462734
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Notice it is #19, wowzer!

By the way, i found this (I mean a book with this high ranking) by putting in "self-help" in the amazon search engine, and then clicking SORT BY "new and popular"

Barnes and Noble also lists books by their sellers rank.

Another book I read suggested looking at the copyright page. If the book has had more than one printing, how many copies were in the first run will be there. I looked in the book I had in my hand, but apparently it was the first printing . It seems like this would only work with older books, and that doesn't seem very useful to me...but your mileage may vary.

I hope you will stick around and talk to us about non-fiction, it gets kinda quiet in this "room".

My approach was to give comparable titles and not try and guess their actual sales numbers.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The problem with Amazon sales figures is that they change drastically. A book that's high in its category one day may be low the next week. (Having been there.)

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Ditto to what veinglory said. Sales data is almost impossible for an average author to obtain. Besides, not every self-help book is comparable to yours. Family issues, diet, sex and meditation all hit wildly different audiences. Broad category data would thus be of limited use. You don't need to convince a self-help publisher that the category is growing - you need to convince the publisher that your book will be the best in its niche, will appeal to a large audience, and that you're the perfect person to write it.

Agents have access to BookScan's sales data, so I would never try to second guess what they're going to look up right away anyway.(Of course, there is much talk in publishing as to how inaccurate BookScan numbers may be, but that's another discussion).

In your comparable titles, I would just list the ones that are similar enough and that a quick glance at Amazon or other best seller lists would show are good sellers. But I wouldn't try to dig up exact figures.