📚 The Untold Story of Book(s) Sales, Part One

Fascinating statistics from Michael Castleman's recent Author's Guild Bulletin article, “The Cruelty—and Possibilities—of 21st Century Book Promotion"

Greetings, Dohnuts! We’re taking a break from the Hurry Up and Wait series, as there are no new updates (yet!) on the moving or renting front.

Although not all of you are authors or aspiring to be—nor need you be—many of you are fellow book lovers. As I write in the acknowledgments of Free Time (still $0.99 on Kindle through Labor Day!):

Books have been my babysitters, my best friends, my business advisors, and my balm. They have given me countless gifts and priceless insights, at bargain prices for the value delivered. Every time my life sprang a leak, there was the next book to help me plug holes in my knowledge, skills, and understanding.

Despite my own obsession with purchasing and reading physical books, it remains perplexing for many authors to sell them—at least in quantities large enough to earn back advances or snowball into evergreen momentum. I recently encountered some fascinating statistics that I couldn’t resist sharing here from Michael Castleman, author of 19 books (!!), most recently, The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Publishing and his related Substack, Beyond The Untold Story of Books.

The latest issue of The Author’s Guild Bulletin (Spring-Summer 2025) includes a remarkably transparent, detailed account of promoting his latest book in an article, “The Cruelty—and Possibilities—of 21st Century Book Promotion: Marketing strategies for the 99.99 percent of authors who aren’t bestsellers.”

In it, he shines a brighter light into the field of book sales, opaque even for those of us trying to make a career of cracking the (book)case.¹ Read the full article (PDF) »

🧮 Some of the most fascinating excerpts from Castleman’s number crunching:

• The very long tail:² During the entire 20th century, American publishers released 2.5 million titles. Today, that many appear every year, helped by the advent of digital, audio, self-publishing, and hybrid houses. (JB note: Who only knows how this will balloon with AI slop 🤢)

• Bestsellers and backlist: There are around 200 official “bestsellers” published each year; that’s one title in 10,000. Americans buy around 800 million trade books annually. Divide that number by 2 million new releases, and the average title sells 400 copies. But bestsellers and backlist books (in print for more than a year) account for more than half of book sales. Account for those sales, and new releases average more like 150 copies.

• Fordham University professor Albert Greco estimates that 79 percent of new releases—four out of five—sell fewer than 100 copies. That means 20 percent of new titles sell over 100 copies, and only 6 percent sell over 1,000. Most self-published books sell in two figures. Big Five releases have the best shot at notice and sales, but today, many Big Five titles sell only a few hundred copies.

• Amazon rankings: Amazon lists around 15 million trade titles in English (plus 2 million more every year). Books with rankings better (i.e., lower) than 1,500,000 are selling in the top 10 percent of Amazon's vast catalogue. If your book ranks better than No. 150,000, you’re in the top 1 percent. The Untold Story of Books’ Amazon rank topped out at No. 21,288. On that one blessed day, it ranked in the top one-quarter of 1 percent of titles. JB note: You can get a rough sense of how Amazon rankings correlate to number of books sold each day via “calculator” estimate sites like this from Rob Eagar.
  Amazon Sales Ranking Calculator (Print Copies Sold):

  • Ranking < 10 = 1,000 books sold per day

  • < 100 = 300

  • < 250 = 200

  • < 1,000 = 70

  • < 2,500 = 50

  • < 5,000 = 25

  • < 10,000 = 10

  • < 100,000 = 1

  • < 150,000+ = Less than 1 book sold per day

  • < 500,000+ = Less than 1 book sold per month

• Pre-order campaigns: Castleman emailed 1,000 family, friends, and associates with brief personal notes. This effort yielded 150 pre-orders, a 15 percent response. “My pre-order 15 percent response rate meant that among my contacts, 85 percent didn’t buy,” he writes. “It’s an old joke. Want to learn how few friends you have? Try selling them anything.”

• JB addition on The Magic Number: Bard Press publisher Todd Sattersten ran his own fascinating analysis of how many books one needs to sell within the first year to reliably become a Perennial Seller: 10,000. For more on this, check out our related Free Time podcast episode and the detailed show notes, followed by part two.

📲 Social media is not always the sales panacea it is promised to be

I’m three books in—first two traditional, third hybrid—and I often question if I’ll ever be able to work with a traditional publisher again for a fourth book (if I’d want to), given that I’m not on social media. These days, it’s not something they readily look past. (And yet, how would it have shaped my brain, attention, and focus over this last decade if I had done it merely for the hope of their hypothetical future approval?).

Besides, social media is not always the sales panacea it is promised to be.

In 2022, The Ankler. published a Substack essay, “#FAIL: How TikTok Stats Fool Hollywood,” on how even the most popular TikTokers’ millions of followers don’t necessarily or automatically translate to success in other mediums:

“Charli D’Amelio — the recently-turned-18-year-old dancer — is the second biggest TikTok star in the world and the most popular American, with 148 million followers, and with an account that is now a paid endorsement machine.

. . . But when the second season of her show came out on Hulu, it failed to make the weekly Nielsen charts in either of its first two weeks. If you’re running the numbers, then, at max, 500,000 people in America are watching The D’Amelio show every week. In reality, I’d guess the actual number could be as low as 50,000 per week, and probably around 100-200,000 each week. The IMDb scores are fairly atrocious too, at a 2.6 on a measly 1,600 reviews.

So… 148 million global followers converts to… a couple hundred thousand people watching a streaming TV show? Charli D’Amelio was able to convert — at best— less than 0.5% of her followers into viewers? Even assuming half of her followers are global… that’s still probably less than 1 percent of her followers watching.

In 2021, The New York Times published a behind-the-sales story about Billie Eilish’s self-titled memoir, “Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, It’s Unreliable.” In his article, Castleman also cites this example, summarizing the stats as follows:

“Even huge social-media followings don’t guarantee sales. The pop star Billie Eilish received a $1 million advance on the strength of her 98 million social media followers. Her book sold 64,000 copies—huge numbers today. But only one follower in 1,500 bought it, nowhere near her publisher’s expectations. Figuring (generously) the publisher netted $5 per copy, the house made $320,000—and lost $680,000.”

That said, I’m still signed up for Leigh Stein’s upcoming month-long Hype House group mentorship program in September, a play on her forthcoming novel launching August 26, If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant For You. (I devoured her previous novel, Self Care). I love the juicy description, sure to be #BookTok catnip:

“Fates collide after a tarot influencer disappears from a decaying Hollywood mansion in this unnerving gothic mystery and ‘incisive social satire’ (Town & Country).”

It’s also a creative sales strategy; leave it to Leigh, who is genius at these things! I enrolled by pre-ordering ten copies of her book for an investment of ~$150. For more incisive publishing insights and interviews, subscribe to her Substack, Attention Economy.³

📔 Castleman’s concluding advice for the 99.99%

At several points in his Author’s Guild article, Castleman repeats a note of real-talk advice for the “99.99 percent” of authors likely to be disappointed by book sales (aka delulu-gone-wild):

“Releasing a book? Keep your expectations low.”

Just the other day, my dad complimented the Free Time project, asking if I had any urge to publish another book in the same entrepreneurial style.

“I’d have to do it as a hobby,” I replied, “a low-stakes side project purely for the love of the artifact (and the process) — it wouldn’t pencil to approach it any other way.” (Especially if it’s not a business book that is likely to yield bulk sales from companies looking for corporate training and speaking.)

I’m too stubborn not to write another book someday, no matter how impossible the math. I have an inexplicable urge to contribute and give back to a field—and community of peers and readers—that has given me so much.

I am also one of the lucky authors, stats-wise—or at least I have been up to this point; who knows what the future holds. Even though none of my books have “made a [bestseller] list,” mine have sold in that top three to six percent, allowing me to make a full-time career of related activities for the last fourteen years.

Still, it has gotten harder (for me) to sell books and land related speaking gigs. Part of that is because my most recent book, Free Time, is geared toward small business owners, not big companies. I can’t fathom what would happen, revenue-wise, if I published in an even less corporate-friendly category; imagine trying to get hired after releasing Rolling in Doh: The Memoir. 😭

Castleman concludes his piece by advising authors to think strategically. “Invest as much time, energy, and money as you can comfortably afford,⁴” he says. “Then persevere.”

To that I would add: and find a way to laugh-cry with others if and when—despite all your best efforts and biggest dreams—you, too, find yourself Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h.⁵

❤️

Continue reading part two, where I share my sales stats and a bunch of additional resources :)

📚 The Untold Story of Book(s) Sales, Part Two

1. 📜 With many thanks to Penney Peirce, who first encouraged me to sign up for The Author’s Guild. Membership is just $149 per year, and includes access to legal services, community forums, educational workshops, and much more. Totally worth it.

2. 🧮 See also: Seth Godin’s essay, “Books Don’t Sell.” “That’s not true, actually,” he writes. “Books sell, but book doesn’t. The odds of a particular book selling a lot of copies are close to zero.”

3. 🥸 For more on Leigh’s “gonzo” social media stint, check out “the results are in:”

the results are in

4. 🍩 Invest any more than this and you’ll be Rolling in Doh with me 😂

📊 An Honest Accounting, Part Three

5. 👉 If you enjoyed this post, you might also appreciate:

New to Rolling in Doh? 🤗 Start Here: A Mad Lib (+ Template!)

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🤸🏻‍♀️ Delulu is the Solulu, Part One

Chasing the Taste of Creative Freedom

📚 Publishing Pivots (Part One)

📘 The Free Time Afterword I Never Wrote, Part 1

💬 If Rolling in Doh were a publishing imprint, what would your imaginary book title be?

162: Should You Self-Publish? (Part One)

164: Let’s Talk Royalties re: Publishing Options (Part Two)

268: Strategies for Surpassing “The Magic Number” of Book Sales with Todd Sattersten of Bard Press (Part One)

271: Specific Road-Tested Tips for Book Sales and Marketing with Todd Sattersten (Part Two)