Werthead Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 Have you personally been in touch with many of those authors and/or their editors to get a clearer picture as to how many books they have sold? Yes. John Ringo and Neil Gaiman confirmed their original figures (from the 2008 list), Brandon Sanderson's editor emailed me with his figures (and confirmed there is a large lag time, so Brandon's figures will be significantly higher now but they don't know by how much) and a few other authors got in touch as well. Most of the information came from PR materials and the authors' own websites. Brooks ahead of Martin? I am sad! He had a 20-year head start (in writing fantasy anyway) and his production output is a tad higher than GRRM's :) If you start dividing series into "Sales per book" (or how many actual readers an author has), however, you'll find Martin blasts ahead of just about every other fantasy author on the list. The only ones who are still significiantly ahead are Lewis, Rowling, Tolkien, Collins and (sob) Meyer. Isn't the original list only for sci-fi/fantasy authors? It is SFF only, I'm definitely not going to start throwing in non-genre authors as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 He had a 20-year head start (in writing fantasy anyway) and his production output is a tad higher than GRRM's :) If you start dividing series into "Sales per book" (or how many actual readers an author has), however, you'll find Martin blasts ahead of just about every other fantasy author on the list. The only ones who are still significiantly ahead are Lewis, Rowling, Tolkien, Collins and (sob) Meyer. That's even more sad! Collins' sales are especially impressive considering that they happened in only 7 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AncalagonTheBlack Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 From Locus's Terry Pratchett Obituary Bestselling fantasy author Terry Pratchett, 66, died March 12, 2015 in his home. Pratchett is best known for his 40-volume Discworld series, which started with The Colour of Magic in 1983. He has sold over 85 million books in 37 languages. http://www.locusmag.com/News/2015/03/terry-pratchett-1948-2015/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seli Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 Isn't the original list only for sci-fi/fantasy authors? The books published under the J.D. Robb pseudonym can be classified as sf, but are only a part of the output of Roberts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord of Rhinos Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 Yep. The " In Death.." series that Roberts publishes under the J.D. Robb pseudonym are romantic police procedurals that start out in 2058 and have Sci-fi things like phasers, flying cars, and droids. That series had its 50th book published this year. Also, she's published books under the Nora Roberts name that feature supernatural elements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hello World Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 Yes. John Ringo and Neil Gaiman confirmed their original figures (from the 2008 list), Brandon Sanderson's editor emailed me with his figures (and confirmed there is a large lag time, so Brandon's figures will be significantly higher now but they don't know by how much) and a few other authors got in touch as well. Most of the information came from PR materials and the authors' own websites. You should have asked Bakker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentRoamer Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 Werthead, Big thanks from me for spending the time to put this together - I think I speak on behalf of most of the community. Interesting (if sometimes sad) to see how authors are faring overall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anatúrinbor Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 How low are you willing to go in terms of copies sold? Because according to this Kameron Hurley has sold in excess of 26,000 copies.To date, best I can tell, weve sold about 7,500 copies of THE MIRROR EMPIRE in the US and Canada alone, and its been reprinted in both the US and UK. As the UK had a first print run of 1500, I think I can comfortably say were probably nearly at the 10,000 copy mark by now (Ive only seen real POS for US/Canada; Ill have actual total numbers when I get royalty statements early this year).For comparison, the buzz-laden GODS WAR has sold, in the US and UK, about 12-13,000 copies in four years.If you accept her 10,000 copies of The Mirror Empire estimate she'd be at to 22-23,000.my work had suffered from declining sales, especially the third book. RAPTURE had sold low, just 2,000 copiesIf the third book sold the least with 2,000 copies we can assume that the second book sold at least 2,000 (the first book is God's War mentioned above).So that makes her total 26-27,000.There could be other info elsewhere, I came across that post by accident. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 How low are you willing to go in terms of copies sold? Because according to this Kameron Hurley has sold in excess of 26,000 copies.If you accept her 10,000 copies of The Mirror Empire estimate she'd be at to 22-23,000.If the third book sold the least with 2,000 copies we can assume that the second book sold at least 2,000 (the first book is God's War mentioned above).So that makes her total 26-27,000.There could be other info elsewhere, I came across that post by accident.Very good blog post, thanks for linking it. It's a damn shame that her first trilogy sold so poorly; they're great books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jussi Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 John FlanaganRanger's Apprentice and Brotherband adventure series have sold more than eight million copies worldwide. Becca Fitzpatrick (December 2012)over two million copies in print in the US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jussi Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 Two updated figures: Orson Scott Card (2009)Orson Scott Card has written fifty-nine books that have sold twenty million copies in North America alone. Dune by Frank HerbertAnd the rest is history: a perennial bestseller, with something like 40 million copies sold worldwide, five bestselling sequels by Herbert and a batch more by his son Brian in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hello World Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Maybe this should be on a rolling release basis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jussi Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Cassandra Clare updatewith over 35 million copies in print worldwide Tom Lloyd updatehave sold over 75,000 copies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anatúrinbor Posted April 7, 2015 Share Posted April 7, 2015 http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/game-of-thrones-creates-ripple-effect-and-rise-of-grimdark-fiction-1.3019422 Canadian writer Scott Bakker is one of those grimdark novelists, and a very successful one. With total book sales of over a million copies, he's the author of seven books, including the Aspect-Emperor trilogy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted April 8, 2015 Author Share Posted April 8, 2015 Reasonably credible. 1 million in 13 years is pretty good going, but not breaking any sales records and certainly doesn't make Bakker very wealthy (consider that GRRM has shifted approximately between 8 and 11 million books per year for the last four years straight, and even Erikson now seems to be shifting 200,000-odd per year). It's also credibly within the publisher divide we've heard before: his pretty strong sales in the UK and Commonwealth territories, good sales in the USA compared to the size of the publisher, and dire sales in Canada. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Lawrence Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 100,000 in the last six months puts me on 600K ... I'm edging towards the million! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 100,000 in the last six months puts me on 600K ... I'm edging towards the million! That is quite great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRevanchist Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Reasonably credible. 1 million in 13 years is pretty good going, but not breaking any sales records and certainly doesn't make Bakker very wealthy (consider that GRRM has shifted approximately between 8 and 11 million books per year for the last four years straight, and even Erikson now seems to be shifting 200,000-odd per year). It's also credibly within the publisher divide we've heard before: his pretty strong sales in the UK and Commonwealth territories, good sales in the USA compared to the size of the publisher, and dire sales in Canada.Interesting.Out of curiosity, any idea how much authors get from the books they sell? Some time ago, I read something like 15% but surely that is too low? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gasp of Many Reeds Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Interesting.Out of curiosity, any idea how much authors get from the books they sell? Some time ago, I read something like 15% but surely that is too low?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalties#Book_publishing_royalties Looks like 15% is actually on the high side of things and 10-12.5% for hardback and 7.5-10% for paperback is much more common. So basically authors can sell a million paper backs at $15 a book and will be lucky to crack $1 million (and for someone like Bakker whose been writing over 10+ years, that's less than $100,000 a year). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anatúrinbor Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I think Bakker's early books, in particular the first two, did very well. Back then it really seemed that he was going to become big in the genre. I'm not sure I can put my hand on it, but I think that his 'downfall' began somewhere after TTT came (there might even be some truth to the claims that the 'misogyny wars' contributed to this). And of course, his non-fantasy works did not do well.All that is just guesswork on my part though...Have you tried asking him directly before you wrote the list? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.