What counts as an impressive sales figure?

[Toby Frost]

I agree with pretty much everyone else!

Regarding massively successful books of the Brown type (which are by nature anomalies), I'm with SJAB. It seems to me that most of them tap into some sort of deep-seated need or interest many people have: an ideal (!) boyfriend, the not-quite-supernatural occulty conspiracy theories many people half-believe, an imaginary life as some sort of tough guy, an idealised schooldays with magic and so on. Writing style and quality may vary, but as OMGIR says, it will suffice for the task at the very least. But these are anomalies, as are the reports of "1st time author gets record advance", which are quite often massaged into exciting news articles from the more mundane truth.

There are some bad books out there, but there are a lot of good ones. The average novel isn't bad and isn't amazing: it does the job and usually fairly well, much like the average rock song, or the average shed. Several years ago I probably felt that publishing was a closed shop, but did keep trying and it's paid off.

Added to the factors mentioned already, I'd include "the market". I don't know if a book like The Lies of Locke Larmora would have got published 10 or 20 years ago: the market may have been different then. But quality does matter, very much so.

 

[Jon Sprunk]

Saw an article today from Writers Beware stating the average self-pub book sells 200 copies. Take it for what it's worth.

 

[J-WO]

Saw an article today from Writers Beware stating the average self-pub book sells 200 copies. Take it for what it's worth.

An interesting number. Most people, if they sit down with pen and notebook and think about it, will find they know about 200 people.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Yes, it's frustrating to see very average prose selling well because it hits a marketing segment that's much bigger than yours - but them's the breaks, kids!

My strategy is, start at the top and work your way down. If I can't sell my current work-in-progress, I'll either save it until I sell something else (because maybe I can resurrect it when I have more experience), or give it away on my website to entice new fans into buying other books. The financial rewards - and potential hit to reputation - of self-publishing are simply not worth the bother, IMHO, not if you really want to be published (as opposed to just having a printed copy in your sticky paws).

I have to say that I've seen some pretty lame stuff being self-published and self-promoted. One guy (who will remain nameless because I never bothered to make a note of it) had a book launch locally and was giving away promotional postcards with a web address on it. The home page looked pretty enough, but drilling down to the actual content revealed character descriptions that would have shamed a third-rate video game, complete with amateurish 3D-rendered "portraits"

Needless to say, I did not go to the launch...