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- Jan 24, 2017
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About three months ago, Publishers Marketplace offered a service where you could pay $25 a month and read the NPD Bookscan and NPD Pubtrack sales numbers for books. Today I actually paid the money and ran reports on the books I most want my book to be like and was shocked by the results. So I'm posting here to see if this is reality or if maybe Bookscan and Pubtrack left some stuff out.
Ok, first book was BRAIN ON FIRE, a 2013 memoir that spent a good amount of time on bestseller lists, Bookscan has 611,805 and Pubtrack has 256,123. Those are numbers since release, and they seemed like what I'd expect.
Then I went for JUNIPER: THE GIRL WHO WAS BORN TOO SOON, a 2016 memoir by two authors who got NPR's Radiolab to do a big piece on their topic. They're both Pulitzer-level authors, one won a Pulitzer, the other was a finalist. And they got 5,880 from Bookscan and 7,611 from Pubtrack since release. And they had a top New York agent repping them, Jane Dystel.
And then I ran a report for LONG HAUL: A TRUCKER'S TALES OF LIFE ON THE ROAD, a 2018 memoir, reviewed in the New York Times, and the author did an interview on NPR's Fresh Air. And his numbers were 10,478 and 11,030 since release.
So my jaw-drop moment is: 13,000 copies for a well-reviewed memoir from authors with lots of platform? 21,000 copies for another one like that? (This is the first time I've ever seen data like this.)
I'm not expecting to make JK Rowling money or anything, but do these numbers seem reasonable? Is this was happens when you sell a book that's well-reviewed but doesn't become the "toast of the town?"
Ok, first book was BRAIN ON FIRE, a 2013 memoir that spent a good amount of time on bestseller lists, Bookscan has 611,805 and Pubtrack has 256,123. Those are numbers since release, and they seemed like what I'd expect.
Then I went for JUNIPER: THE GIRL WHO WAS BORN TOO SOON, a 2016 memoir by two authors who got NPR's Radiolab to do a big piece on their topic. They're both Pulitzer-level authors, one won a Pulitzer, the other was a finalist. And they got 5,880 from Bookscan and 7,611 from Pubtrack since release. And they had a top New York agent repping them, Jane Dystel.
And then I ran a report for LONG HAUL: A TRUCKER'S TALES OF LIFE ON THE ROAD, a 2018 memoir, reviewed in the New York Times, and the author did an interview on NPR's Fresh Air. And his numbers were 10,478 and 11,030 since release.
So my jaw-drop moment is: 13,000 copies for a well-reviewed memoir from authors with lots of platform? 21,000 copies for another one like that? (This is the first time I've ever seen data like this.)
I'm not expecting to make JK Rowling money or anything, but do these numbers seem reasonable? Is this was happens when you sell a book that's well-reviewed but doesn't become the "toast of the town?"