More Statistics on Books

I’m currently reading and enjoying Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. More on that when I finish it.

In reading the book, I happened upon this section about books sales. I thought I’d replicate it here, as a follow-up to my previous post about the surprising economics of dead trees. Here’s what Anderson has to say:

In 2004, 950,000 books out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen BookScan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. In other words, about 98 per cent of books are non-commercial, whether they were intended that way or not.

Consider that again: “about 98 per cent of books are non-commercial, whether they were intended that way or not”. I forget who I paraphrase here, but publishing isn’t so much an industry as a well-organized hobby.

This is actually from an article that Anderson wrote for the Times Online. It’s verbatim from his book, though, which also features a handy chart.

In case you’re wonder, that’s a long-tailed macaque in the photo.