Books don’t sell

in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.

Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House, says the top 4 percent of titles drive 60 percent of the profitability. That goes for the rest of them too:

Having a lot of social media followers or fame doesn’t guarantee it will sell. The singer Billie Eilish, despite her 97 million Instagram followers and 6 million Twitter followers, sold only 64,000 copies within eight months of publishing her book. The singer Justin Timberlake sold only 100,000 copies in the three years after he published his book.... See more