The truth about most traditionally published novels
A dramatic-opener, I know, but please forgive me! I thought about being blunt in the headline but what I’m about to say is hugely nuanced and complex, and I didn’t want to come across as scaremongering.
Perhaps you knew this already. Perhaps, deep down, I did too. But something I’ve learnt throughout my journey of being published (six books released to date, two more under contract) is that:
MOST NOVELS DO NOT SELL MANY COPIES.
See, that would have been a REALLY depressing headline!
Also, here again, I must preface this by saying I’m talking about most traditionally published novels.
Because I don’t know anything about self-published books and I don’t know much about non-fiction, and the digital book market is completely different and again, although I hear all the time of great success by my fellow authors in that department, I don’t have any direct experience of that publishing model.
I think back to when I first started writing and how naive I was. I honestly thought the hardest thing would be getting an agent.
I was actually quite lucky and it only took me about three months to get an agent, but even so, it was the longest three months of my life. So if you are looking for an agent right now then I hugely sympathise! It can be a very long and painful process.
Anyway, I got my agent and I thought, YES! I’ve done it. The hardest bit is behind me and now it’s going to be all sunshine and rainbows from here on in.
I guess I knew it was tricky to get a publisher but I assumed if you had an agent then at some point, it was a sure thing that you would get picked up by a publisher.
I don’t have any stats on that, by the way.
I’d love to know if there are many authors out there with agents who are consistently trying who still haven’t secured a publishing deal after ten years?
Anyway, it turned out I was wrong about that too. I wrote two books that my agent didn’t manage to sell, another that we agreed wasn’t strong enough to go out on submission, before writing my fourth novel, The Rival, which finally sold to Quercus.
By that point, I was already pretty battle-hardened.
But really, the true test of my mettle was yet to come.
I guess I assumed if you got a publishing contract with a big publisher - which I did (Quercus are part of Hachette) - then that was it. Your book would be a success.
Again, I was so naive.
I don’t really know where that assumption came from either. I guess I just didn’t know enough about the publishing industry, or the market for novels, and I had no idea just HOW MANY NOVELS were published each year.
Looking back now, it seems obvious that OF COURSE not every book that’s traditionally published can become a bestseller, but it really, honestly, didn’t occur to me at the time.
Now I know.
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I have heard on the grapevine and read on various blogs and heard on podcasts that the average number of copies a traditionally published book sells throughout its lifetime is 3000.
From my experience chatting to authors over the years, I’d say that sounds eminently possible.
And 3000 copies - if you are writing commercial fiction - is not a lot.
I mean, it IS a lot if you try to visualise 3000 people standing in a field holding a copy of your book, but it’s not a lot if you want to make a decent living from your writing.
What happens in the commercial fiction space is that some books - maybe 2% of all books that are released - suck up all the market, selling thousands upon thousands of copies.
I remember speaking to someone in publishing a long time ago (I can’t remember who it was annoyingly!) and they told me that the majority of adults read one or two novels a year - often while on holiday - and they will choose the book that they’ve seen EVERYWHERE.
That’ll be that year’s BIG BOOK.
Think Crawdads, Lessons in Chemistry, Osman etc etc
The person I was talking to referred to them as the ‘cannibal’ books, which eat up all the shelf space and the publicity and the attention.
It’s almost a self-perpetuating thing. The more they sell, the more they sell.
These are the books that are still available to buy in supermarkets six, eight, ten months after their initial publication.
These are the books that sustain the publishers, that basically provide the income so that publishers can afford to take risks on other authors.
They are often ‘written’ by celebrities, but that’s a post for another day… 😉
When I look back, I try to remember what I thought might happen when my debut novel was released.
I wasn’t wholly naive, I did know that the likelihood of my book becoming a massive bestseller was slim.
But maybe I hoped it would sell enough copies that I would out-earn my advance, which was a pretty high five-figure one.
It didn’t! And it still hasn’t.
But that’s not unusual. Most authors I know who have published a few books and are still writing and being published today, have not sold thousands upon thousands of copies of their books.
I am sure you are fully aware that most authors don’t earn enough from their writing alone to sustain themselves.
Everyone talks about how hard it is to make a living from writing, and I suppose I assumed that they were just moaning, and I looked at all the bestselling authors and thought ‘well, it’s definitely possible’.
And it is! It absolutely is. You absolutely HAVE to keep the faith in this industry, believe in yourself, and keep producing your best work.
It’s just not definitely likely.
The truth is, that most novels do not sell many copies.
If you get a publishing deal, the likelihood of your book selling a gajillion copies is still really really slim.
Why the size of your advance matters →
But it’s also quite unpredictable.
The good news
You might have got a small advance at a big publisher, and after reading this decided that the likelihood is your book won’t sell that many copies, but that’s not necessarily true.
There are those rare breakout books that seem to come from nowhere and catch people’s attention, and these can then go on to sell far more numbers than their publisher ever anticipated.
Also, there’s DEFINITELY the possibility that a book you’ve previously published takes off at a later date. Especially if you have a breakout book further down the line
So, what’s the point of this post, you might be wondering?
I guess to reassure you that if your book hasn’t been a massive success and sold thousands of copies that this is totally normal.
You are NOT a failure.
You have not disappointed your publisher.
This is probably, in fact, exactly what your publisher expected to happen.
Eek, I know.
Sure, they would have hoped for a different outcome, but they would also have known (perhaps unbeknownst to you) that it was the most likely thing to happen to your book.
Because most novels do not sell many copies.
It’s just the way it is.
As I’ve said before - each book is a lottery ticket, and you just have to keep on buying them, until one day, your numbers come in…
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Thank you for this insight! I've written one book, a nonfiction how-to in 2017 ("The Trail Runner's Companion: A Step-by-Step Guide to Trail Running and Racing, from 5Ks to Ultras") published by a niche small publisher with little to no promotion. I did all the marketing myself. I really, really wanted it to hit 10K in sales. The book had good legs initially, for its niche, but eventually stalled out around 8500 copies sold in its lifetime (print + ebook combined). I know your post is about fiction, but nonetheless it makes me feel better!
There's a lot here Charlotte and thank you. I see you published with one of the Big 5 imprints. You should have sold tens of thousands of copies, starting with at least 20,000 to libraries. Then there are bookstore and online sales, which I've been told is at least as many as the libraries. So now you are up to maybe 50,000 books. If you didn't sell this many you have some serious questions for the publisher. What went wrong? What just happened here?