Facts About the Fiction Market

There are have been a couple of recent articles on the market for fiction that I have found quite interesting. The first, entitled Tyler is top-selling Man Booker longlisted title, by Kiera O'Brien and Sarah Shaffi, looks at literary fiction and in particular the sales figures of the 13 titles longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year. The story is interesting both for informing us of the relatively low sales figures for literature, as well as giving us a sense of how much an appearance on the longlist is worth in terms of sales.

The key points by title (all sales were as of 10th September):

1. Anne Tyler A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus) is the bestselling of the 13 longlist titles selling 20,102 copies in total across all editions through Nielsen BookScan. It sold 7,680 copies since the longlist was announced.
2. Anne Enright The Green Road (Jonathan Cape) sold 2,355 extra copies since being longlisted, for a total of 8,938. 
3. Hanya Yanigahara A Little Life (Picador), which was published three weeks after the longlist announcement, has sold 7,542 copies
4. Marlon James A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications) has sold 6,694 copies, which is 3,471 more than before the announcement. 
5. Andrew O’Hagan’s The Illuminations (Faber & Faber) sold 457 copies since the longlist was announced, for a total of 3,273 copies. 
6. Marilynne Robinson Lila (Virago) has sold 12,184 copies, but only 625 copies since the longlist. 
7. Tom McCarthy Satin Island (Jonathan Cape) went from 922 to 1,511 after the announcement. 
8. Sunjeev Sahota The Year of the Runaways (Picador) went from 413 copies to 1,302.
9. Anna Smaill The Chimes (Sceptre) went from 411 to 1,008. 
10. Laila Lalami The Moor’s Account released on 27th August, has sold 1,783 copies. 
11. Bill Clegg Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape) released 1st September, has sold 885 copies. 
12. Chigozie Obioma The Fishermen (One, Pushkin Press) had not charted when the longlist was announced and has now sold 1,252 copies.
13. Anuradha Roy Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus) had not charted and has now sold 604 copies.

These are startlingly small numbers for the best books written in English last year. And while sales will continue to grow, particularly as some of the books are released in paperback, it underlines the fact that most literature (which does not receive this sport of acclaim) does not sell very well. This is true even when the book is by a previously acclaimed writer, such as Anne Enright (a previous winner of the Mann Booker Prize).

The second derives from an NPR report that also looked at literary fiction. In When It Comes To Book Sales, What Counts As Success Might Surprise You, Lynn Neary. According to this report, success can be defined as follows:

So what is a good sales figure for any book?

"A sensational sale would be about 25,000 copies," says literary agent Jane Dystel. "Even 15,000 would be a strong enough sale to get the publisher's attention for the author for a second book."

But if that second book doesn't sell, says Dystel, odds are you won't get another chance.

The third report is by SFF writer Kameron Hurley who discusses her own book sales in The Cold Publishing Equations: Books Sold + Marketability + Love (which follows up on a previous report 2014: Some (Honest) Publishing Numbers, and (Almost) Throwing in the Towel) as well as some average figures for publishing as a whole:

The average book sells 3000 copies in its lifetime (Publishers Weekly, 2006).

Yes. It’s not missing a zero.

Take a breath and read that again.

But wait, there’s more!

The average traditionally published book which sells 3,000 in its entire lifetime in print only sells about 250-300 copies its first year.

But I’m going indie! you say. My odds are better!

No, grasshopper. Your odds are worse.

The average digital only author-published book sells 250 copies in its lifetime.

Regarding her own publishing success, Hurley writes:

my first book, GOD’S WAR, which I was paid $6,500 for and which earned out its advance and started making money in its first 6 months – after selling only its first 5500 copies. It has since gone on to sell over 20,000.

And

MIRROR EMPIRE did even better, with a $7,000 advance and sales in excess of 13,000 copies already. It’s in its second printing and now has a mass market version as well. It’s also sold audio rights and foreign rights to Germany and the Czech Republic. It’s not making me or my publisher millions, but it’s keeping the lights on.

 Hurley also reports on some more unfortunate outcomes for authors she knows:

So while all this sounds mid-list rosy, I want to talk about the not-so-rosy stuff, because I have seen sales numbers that would leave you sobbing your guts out on the sidewalk (ha ha if you’re already sobbing at the ones I’ve shared YOU ARE IN FOR A SURPRISE). There are authors – authors you may have heard of – who have sold a couple hundred copies of a title in its lifetime. I’ve seen publisher spreadsheets that show some authors selling just a dozen copies over eight months. I remember one author had sold four copies in twelve months and I thought for sure it was a typo but it wasn’t.

These things happen. They happen to great writers, and exceptional books.

And they fuck up people’s careers. Many of us don’t come back from it.

I nearly didn’t.

In the case of numbers this bad, there are usually a lot of things that go wrong all at once – publisher fuck-ups, poor timing, bad pitching to bookstores, no author-driven marketing, bigger books moving to the top of reviewers’ piles, big news events that drown out signal, and yes, sometimes it’s just not a great book either, etc.

These are striking facts. I am very grateful to Hurley for sharing them publicly. While I did not love her book The Mirror Empire (see my review here), I will read the next in the series and wish her nothing but the best in her career.

The facts are also more than a little depressing. As a consumer of SFF (and fiction more generally) I am concerned whenever I hear that the economics of publishing may be discouraging potentially good writers to write. I can't help but wonder if we are moving towards a system of micro Patronage through sites such as Patreon?