“It’s downright wild out there”: A Q&A on Book Sales with Alyson Forbes
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Don’t Write Alone
Tajja Isen: What factors determine the size of an author’s advance?
TI: Book sales—the literal numbers of them—can seem like a bit of a black box. How are copies counted, and how often do writers “earn out”?
Say Anything
TI: How much does an author make per book (in hardcover, paperback, and ebook), and which format tends to sell the most copies?
TI: We know selling, say, a hundred copies isn’t great and selling a million copies is amazing, but in terms of the in-between: What’s considered a good sales range for a debut book?
TI: What about how the sales of a debut affect the fate of the author’s next book?
TI: Do most backlist titles eventually stop selling? How can an author continue to support their backlist titles?
Tajja Isen (@tajjaisen) is the editor-in-chief of Catapult. Her first book, Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service, was published in April 2022.
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