Sunday, May 13, 2007

Harper's Index

The June issue of Harper's has some fascinating stats in the index and I'm compelled to share:

  • Percentage of U.S. households that will have a Nintendo Wii by 2011, according to Merrill Lynch: 30 (Excellent progress! Our plan for the Wii-ification of American culture will nearly be complete.)
  • (For Moonrat and Nikki) Minimum number of different books sold in the U.S. last year, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan: 1,446,000
  • Number of those that sold fewer than 99 copies: 1,123,000
  • Number that sold more than 100,000: 483

Yes, those last set of stats are disturbing. HB asked me if I thought I was in the right industry. After some hemming and hawing, I admitted that I have no idea.

4 comments:

moonrat said...

...hey!! if ONE of my books could be in that 483, I'll die happy.

Anonymous said...

God that's depressing.

Anonymous said...

Over 1.2 million books sold less than 99 copies each. Doesn't say much for publishers ability to pick books.

Rhonda Eudaly Simpson said...

Yes, the numbers are depressing - but lets not look at the 200,000+ books that sold somewhere IN BETWEEN. Yes there needs to be a more fair statistic, and people need to read more, but hey, if statistics are going to scare people away from publishing, so be it. More room for me.