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Million-to-one chance for million-seller

February 2008

I had a wonderful time at Jerry B. Jenkins' Writing for the Soul conference in Colorado Springs. However, there's the temptation for wannabe writers to believe that they too will sell 64 million copies of their books just like his Left Behind series. Here's a reality check. According to Publisher's Weekly, in 2004, of the 1.2 million books tracked by Nielson Bookscan:

    950,000 (79%) sold less than 99 copies

    200,000 (17%) sold less than 1,000 copies

    25,000 (0.02%) sold more than 5,000 copies

    500 (0.0004%) sold 100,000 copies

    10 (0.0000008%) sold more than 1,000,000 copies

And here's the most amazing statistic: The average book sold 500 copies! I'm not sure if that's encouraging or discouraging!

Related sites
• My page of writers' resources
• My slightly better-than-average-selling books
• My next writers' conference


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