Skar,
Some perspective. Â A mild bestselling hardback book (i.e. in the NY Times top 50, but not in the top 25) sells between 35-40k books. Â Or, around 2-4k books a week in its opening weeks, averaged at 700 books a week over a year (though paperbacks usually come out after about ten months, so it would be a little higher.) Â A super mega bestseller in sf/f (Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind) sells between 100k and 200k books in hardback.
Tor Printed 11k of my book to start, and had to print 2k more in order to fill demand. Â The numbers Ookla is giving us count for about 70% of the POS (Point of Sale--i.e. bookstores) market in the US. Â They don't include Canada or library sales.
So, my book has sold around 4,300 copies via bookscan. Â Small initial week sales, but also small drop off (indicating good word of mouth.) Â That translates to around 6,100 copies POS, with perhaps another 1k copies in Canada and library sales.
That takes us to about 7000 copies sold. Â My advance for this book was 10k. Â With the money from the book club, I've so far earned around 20k in royalties--or, about double the advance. Â
If I continue to sell an average of 50 books (bookscan) a week until the paperback comes out, we will be inching toward 9,750 copies sold in hardback, which will equate to a 75% sell-through of the novel's print run. Â This is a very respectable number, about where a 'successful' book is expected to be. Â
For a first time author, these are very good numbers. Â Publishers don't expect to make a lot of money off of someone like me, they just want to get the name out. Â However, I've done as well as a lot of old-timers have. Â Other new authors aren't as lucky.
As a frame of reference, this book came out the same day that mine did. Â You can compare sales rank numbers for it and for my novel:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060741503/ref=pd_sim_3/002-0382797-1574406?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glancehttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765311771/qid=1116370464/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-0382797-1574406?v=glance&s=books&n=507846(Oh, and by the way, Eldon is LDS and a really great guy. Â I haven't read the book, but I have a copy, and I'm hoping that his numbers pick up with the second novel. Â He seems like a class act, very humble and interesting.)