Book Sales and Bestsellers

The cluster discusses book sales statistics, the hit-driven nature of the publishing industry where most books sell few copies, and how bestseller lists prioritize marketing and popularity over quality.

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20
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#3872
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Keywords

BookScan IT NYT US OP MLM IMHO OK E2 OCD books book publishers published harry potter potter sold sell harry author

Sample Comments

ChrisArchitect May 8, 2024 View on HN

More current related:No one buys books (from the same author as OP)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958Yes, People Still Buy Books: How a viral post got some key statistics wronghttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40288047

ChrisArchitect May 7, 2024 View on HN

Related:No one buys bookshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958

tesseract Nov 28, 2009 View on HN

Yeah, one of them will sell more books.

ajsnigrutin Aug 3, 2021 View on HN

Yep... but the book will sell :)

daedrdev Apr 2, 2025 View on HN

35% of books published are profitable96% of books sold less than 1,000 copies in 202050% sold less than a dozen copies in 2020This is the state of the industry, publishers publish many books gambling for the hits the make up the vast majority of their revenue.It is a very cold industry with many authors failing to get readers interested. They best measure of schuss is to have a preexisting readership or be popular elsewhere, and even then that's by no means a guarantee of a boo

Eisenstein Sep 27, 2024 View on HN

I suggest you look into how many things were published without such scrutiny, because they sold.

easytiger Jun 15, 2022 View on HN

In fairness it's easy to have a best seller if you just shoot the people who won't read it

going_to_800 Oct 29, 2021 View on HN

Mate, that's how most best-seller non-fictional books work

subsection1h Sep 27, 2015 View on HN

Did you search[1] for discussions? This subject was discussed nine days ago.[2][1] https://hn.algolia.com/?type=story&dateRange=pastMonth&query...[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233339

wolco Jul 30, 2020 View on HN

More content is being written than read. If a book manages a few thousand sold they could end up on the best seller list.People still write at a loss in many cases