Sales Numbers

[Peter Ahlstrom]

old thread here

I was checking numbers for the Kingdom Hearts manga today, when I decided to ask about Elantris... You had a great Christmas!

Title Report: Bestseller & Sales History
Author:SANDERSON BRANDON	Title:ELANTRIS	Publisher:ST MARTINS TR/HOLTZBRINCK	Format: Hardcover
Week Ending	Week #	Weekly Sales	YTD Sales
4/24/2005	16	43	43
5/1/2005	17	424	467
5/8/2005	18	454	921
5/15/2005	19	413	1334
5/22/2005	20	407	1741
5/29/2005	21	288	2029
6/5/2005	22	297	2326
6/12/2005	23	234	2560
6/19/2005	24	236	2796
6/26/2005	25	217	3013
7/3/2005	26	198	3211
7/10/2005	27	128	3339
7/17/2005	28	151	3490
7/24/2005	29	114	3604
7/31/2005	30	129	3733
8/7/2005	31	122	3855
8/14/2005	32	115	3970
8/21/2005	33	111	4081
8/28/2005	34	82	4163
9/4/2005	35	90	4253
9/11/2005	36	80	4333
9/18/2005	37	62	4395
9/25/2005	38	64	4459
10/2/2005	39	42	4501
10/9/2005	40	49	4550
10/16/2005	41	33	4583
10/23/2005	42	45	4628
10/30/2005	43	51	4679
11/6/2005	44	31	4710
11/13/2005	45	41	4751
11/20/2005	46	25	4776
11/27/2005	47	102	4878
12/4/2005	48	53	4931
12/11/2005	49	62	4993
12/18/2005	50	65	5058
12/25/2005	51	113	5171
1/1/2006	52	48	5219
Week Ending	Week #	Weekly Sales	YTD Sales
1/8/2006	1	31	31
1/15/2006	2	37	68
1/22/2006	3	42	110

[EUOL]

Wow!  Thanks, Ookla.  Looks like we're still hanging on.  I expected sales to be almost nil by now, but they're not bad at all.  

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Yeah, only dipped below the Nov. 6 number on one week since then...I'd say that's very good news.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

New numbers. Wow!

Title Report: Bestseller & Sales History
Author:SANDERSON BRANDON	Title:ELANTRIS	Format: Hardcover
Week Ending	Week #	Weekly Sales	YTD Sales
1/29/2006	4	32	142
2/5/2006	5	44	186
2/12/2006	6	23	209
2/19/2006	7	20	229
2/26/2006	8	27	256
3/5/2006	9	13	269
3/12/2006	10	22	291
3/19/2006	11	29	320
3/26/2006	12	24	344
4/2/2006	13	13	357
4/9/2006	14	19	376
4/16/2006	15	15	391
4/23/2006	16	13	404
4/30/2006	17	13	417
5/7/2006	18	16	433
5/14/2006	19	31	464
5/21/2006	20	17	481
5/28/2006	21	11	492
6/4/2006	22	5	497
6/11/2006	23	3	500
6/18/2006	24	15	515	5734
Format: MM Paperback
Week Ending	Week #	Weekly Sales	YTD Sales	Fantasy Ranking
5/28/2006	21	77	77	0
6/4/2006	22	918	995	33
6/11/2006	23	1082	2077
6/18/2006	24	982	3059

[Fellfrosch]

Holy cow. That's some nice paperback sales you got there, mister.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

I know none of us are very jealous of these numbers.




Drawl!

[Spriggan]

Almost a thousand paperbacks in one week?  Am I reading that right?  If so I want my cut.

[Lanternpost]

Ookla, didn't you mention previous that Nielsen Bookscan is normally seventy percent accurate?  I noticed that according to their list, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 7.02 million copies but according to Wikipedia at 13.5 million which could be trash if not for the fact that NB reported it sold 4.1 million first day when it sold 6.9 million.

Point:  Hardcover Elantris might have sold ten, eleven thousand copies?  

Paperback sales are incredible right now.  Who knows.  Mistborn 2, an NYT bestseller?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.  And help.

[Spriggan]

Ya, we all know about the margin of error for the book scan list.  It was debated in the original thread Ookla linked too.

[EUOL]

Ookla,

Hey, thanks!  

You seem impressed by the numbers.  Are they good?  I emailed Joshua with them, but I don't know if this is impressive or not, honestly.  I sold over twice as many as I did in hardback, but that isn't really that impressive, since Tor printed around four times as many of the paperback as they did the hardback.  

[stacer]

Paperback sales are usually supposed to be more than hardcover, especially now with the depressed hardcover market. People would just rather pay less for a book, unless they're really really into the author/book and want to have a book that will last a while.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I'm impressed. Maybe I shouldn't be, but then the books I usually work on don't have a hardback version that have been available already for a long time. That many copies sold for a manga would put it in the top 20 (compare that to #33 here), which is pretty good. (We're not getting many series in the top 20 recently... Viz has been spanking us for the last 10 months or so.)

[EUOL]

Joshua's response:

Brandon:  If I'd had to guess based on my bookstore research, I was probably
going to say the first week would have been around 1000 copies.  We all want
to have books blowing out in even bigger quantity, but considering how well the
hardcover did, I do think this is a decent first week # for the paperback,
especially if (as my research suggests it should) the numbers hold steady here
for another week or two.  The important thing with the hardcover wasn't the
400+ copies sold the first week, but the 400+ sold the third.  I'd like to see
week #3 for the paperback somewhere over 750.

-----
One thing he didn't note is the Bookscan 70% mark, which means we sold more around 1400 than a thousand.  Plus, isn't bookscan from Sunday-Saturday?  If so, and the book was released on Tuesday, this was really only a five day span.

[stacer]

In general, yes, Bookscan is about 70%. But I've seen numbers from some small presses that Bookscan actually only hits about 20% of their numbers, so that number can vary widely.

[EUOL]

Stacer,

My understanding was that the 70% number was to compensate for the independents, which they can't gather very well.  I figured that they got 100 or 90% on BN and Borders, then much less on the others, which figures out to be 70% overall.