As a new and supremely obscure novelist, I decided to research trends in book buying by the American public over the past year. As my novels are published by a small company and released without any advance promotion efforts on the part of the publisher, I was curious to see if other books from unknown publishers and authors were managing to sell well, despite little or no media attention.
First, I pulled the "Top 100" list from Amazon.com. Of the top sellers, twenty-nine were fiction, a somewhat disheartening realization for a hopeful novelist.
But even less encouraging to new and untested writers, every one of the novels listed were from major publishers or imprints of the majors. More than half came from well-known "name brand" authors and even more disconcerting, 10 of the twenty-nine best selling works of fiction had not even been released yet!
The advance orders for these books place them among the top 100. Of course, most writers with a book listed on Amazon.com know that trying to determine actual sales from the rankings is one of the great mysteries of the universe. Recently, I placed an order for a dozen of my books, when they were offering free shipping, and my ranking went up (meaning down) considerably. The higher the ranking, the less sales activity. Or so I'm told.
Looking at a USA Today list of the 150 top-selling books as of March 17, 2002, nearly half are fiction, including children's books, a slightly more encouraging sign. After the terrorist attacks, many booksellers feared that fiction might become redundant for a while, but apparently this is not the case now, as most Americans seemed to have resumed their lives with minimal adjustments.
Those who bought and enjoyed fiction prior to September 11th are still doing so. But upon closer examination, the list reveals nearly identical statistics among the novels on Amazon's list.
All of the best selling fiction books were published by the majors and nearly half of the novels are again coming from the famous names. Patterson, Grisham, King, Steel, Sparks, Rice, Kingsolver - these are just a few of the regulars, some appearing more than once on the list.
So what have I learned so far? The book-buying public likes the familiar. Presumably, these well-known writers have earned this loyalty by excellent storytelling.
The publishers of these authors know that their names are sales tools and use them accordingly. Take a look at the quarter-page ads in the USA Today book section on any Thursday. These authors are promoted at a great expense, as they surely deserve.
After all, they have earned millions, perhaps, for their publishers.
But I wonder if they really need the constant promotion now - haven't they built up huge audiences already? Wouldn't the publisher create new sales by promoting an unknown instead, if the stars' books will sell regardless?
