Todd Sattersten, publisher of Bard Press, starts his analysis by nothing that, in the business category, 86 percent of sales are backlist titles—a percentage that has only been growing. He then goes on to collect first-year sales data for titles released between 2012 and 2015 and finds that if a book didn’t sell 10,000 copies in its first year, there was only an 11 percent chance it would ever sell more than 10,000 copies. Read the full analysis.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
