Numbers from the book industry

Ever considered making money by writing books? Here are some "encouraging" numbers for you to consider.

In 2004, 950,000 books out of 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen BookScan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1200 books sold more than 50,000 copies. True, 10 books sold over a million copies (17 million in total).

The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Whats the number is other parts of the world I don't know, but probably the difference with Europe is not huge (even if it would be 3x more, its still a pathetic number).

This means that 98% of the books are noncommercial, whether they were intented that way or not.

// Source: The Long Tail, Chris Anderson