"The NYT reported that 98% of new titles in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies... The shift toward backlist sales accelerated more quickly in 2020 as bookstores closed to foot traffic, removing a key avenue for big publishers to promote new titles." @JaneFriedman @HotSheetPub

Big publishers publish more books than they can market, fishing for that one big hit, while their entire backlist is full of "new to you" books that readers discover outside of traditional channels and 8-week marketing programs. Amazon has benefited the most from this.

Selling <5k books is only a bad thing if you ignore the fact that it's the norm and build an operation that abandons all of those books after ~8 weeks, leaving it to authors and fans to help them find an audience. That's not real publishing, that's bad gambling.

You want to help authors get published and get paid? Stop pretending a Big 5 book deal is the dream. Focus instead on partnering with a small/midsized publisher who will help you build and expand your platform, or teach the real work that goes into successful self-publishing.

Back when I had access to Bookscan numbers a few years ago, I was mildly surprised by how many of your Twitter faves were selling < 10k copies of any of their books, but they're with Big 5 imprints so of course they're killing it, right? #cmonson