Kind eReader,

Last week I learned something fascinating, which made me rethink all my beliefs about the book publishing business. Having made my name via the small press, and subsequently chosen to publish my own works, I’ve always felt like a small fish in a big pond. No doubt most romance authors reading this column do too. But you know what? The pond may be big, but it seems very few of the fish are.

The subject is book sales, and what you don’t know about them will surprise you.

Here’s the backstory: Barnes & Noble invited me, as a publisher, to subscribe to Nielsen Bookscan, a service that tracks 65-70% of North American book sales. In my research about Bookscan, I came upon a couple of fascinating articles from the past couple of years.

Book publishing blogger Morris Rosenthal crunched some Bookscan numbers and determined a few amazing facts:

* Only 2% of the 1.2 million titles sold in 2004 had sales above 5,000.
* For example, 75% of McGraw-Hill’s titles sell no more than a few copies a year.
* Morris’s calculations from various sources estimated that the average trade published book sold 2,000 copies.

Morris had this interesting info to share as well: At Barnes & Noble and Borders, a large portion of titles don’t even sell one copy before getting returned to the publisher, another large group sell so poorly that they get dropped within a few months, and of the remaining titles, the average book sits on the shelf for six months.

Fascinating.

But isn’t it funny how we’ve never wondered about book sales numbers? I mean, we don’t even notice the fact that we really never hear what they are. You can find out hard numbers about music sales, housing, web traffic, box office sales…but nobody really knows how many copies the latest Oprah-recommended novel has sold.

I think it’s safe to say the numbers for the Harry Potter books are impressive. But there are a lot of high-profile, well-hyped titles that secretly sell amazingly poorly. In an article on the subject by Daniel Gross writing for Slate, the author lists a number of surprising flops. He cites, for example, a memoir by a big name political figure who received a million dollar advance, which in spite of “a blitzkrieg of publicity” had not even sold to that magical 5,000 copy level.

I recall when I first broke into the romance industry a few years back, I happened to mention something about my sales in my newsletter. My publisher at that time got me on the phone and said to never discuss book sales. And had I known no one else ever did it, I certainly wouldn’t have made the mistake! Considering just how vast the difference is between actual book sales and the public’s perception, you can see why publishers keep their sales on the downlow. And I have a lot better appreciation for my own sales levels now.

To me, this whole story is just another reason why the publishing world should change its ways. If the average title sells so low, the answer is not to dump the book. Even if a few hundred people read it, it was still a benefit to them. No, the answer is to take better advantage of today’s technology: ebooks and print on demand. After all, authors are happy to write even if the financial remuneration is small. And readers are happy to read even if their taste isn’t shared by 25% of the population. So why not forget the numbers game and sell all those titles without having to destroy unwanted copies by the train load.

So, all this made me feel much better about myself both as an author and a publisher. I’m not as small a fish as I thought! And it’s nice to know the inhabitants of the pond include a handful of blue whales, a modest number of tuna, and a whole lot of us healthy, plump minnows. I say, everybody into the pool!

eRead on,

Diana

Diana Laurence is the author of the Soulful Sex anthologies of erotic romance fiction, and released her latest book “Bloodchained” in September (www.bloodchained.com). Diana’s works are published by Living Beyond Reality Press (www.livingbeyondreality.com). Visit her at www.dianalaurence.com or enjoy her blog at www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com.

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