Question to Authors About The Number of Books

[Dianne]

Good morning everybody. I have a question, I have a phone meeting with my publisher on Tuesday. What is the average number of books that a new author sales in a 3 month time span? How many books (units) was your first run and how many have you sold?

Dianne
Kissing Frogs in Cyberspace

[David]

Hi Dianne,

I self-published my first novel, so my experience will not be helpful. But i've been reading several books on "how to find a publisher" for my second novel, and i'm seeing that for a small press 1,000 - 2,000 books is a typical first print run. For a larger press, 5,000 - 10,000 is a very solid first print run. This was for first time authors, not established authors, and for fiction more than non-fiction, but you might be able to use that info as a starting point.

If you sold even 1,000 books in 3 months, i'd say that's quite impressive.

[Alice]

The number of sales greatly depends on the publisher (and their distribution), your author platform, genre, and sales in general. Time of year is also a factor. You may have a new author at an epublisher sell 25 copies in 3 months or they could sell 2000. With print publishers it varies. As a whole though, I think print publishers are starting to publish smaller print runs.