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The SFF All-Time Sale List (vol 2) (updated Dec 2018)


Werthead
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40 minutes ago, Lord Patrek said:

Yep, worldwide sales for sure. The book appeared on the NYT list, but there is no way it could have sold that many units in the USA alone.

On the other hand, for better or worse, the Rothfuss debut was a huge hit and the book has remained a top 100 seller on Amazon pretty much every month since its release. There is no way the Clarke has surpassed it.

Doesn't change much. Twilight is still (rightfully) the best selling debut of the 2000s.

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On 9/30/2019 at 12:01 PM, Ran said:

Deserves ten times as many readers! 

Agreed if you mean Clarke.  That's good news about her new book coming out next year.  Strange and Norrell is one of my favorite books.

I'm not sure what to think about four million in sales.  Sounds alright I guess though I do think it could be higher. 

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11 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I assume this means we are never getting the follow up to Strange and Norrell? 

No, just that the next book will not be it. The third book (included in this deal) may well be the Childermass book. She did say that she was writing his story and I'd assume it'd be a lot shorter than JS&MN.

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15 hours ago, Jussi said:

I don't believe this Brandon Sanderson claim:

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=1939424453

A Game of Thrones has sold about 20 million by itself. All six Mistborn books combined selling more than 20 million might be possible. The last Sanderson figure I had was from about three years ago when it was 26 million total Sanderson sales, 16 million from his solo novels and 10 million from his WoT books. If that figure had increased significantly, then Mistborn making up the majority of sales (it's his largest series) is possible. It suggests Stormlight might be doing less well than you'd think, backed up by that statement from a year or so back that The Way of Kings had sold 1 million copies by itself, so the series as a whole well under 3 million.

Overall, comparing the combined sales of 6 books to 1 and then boasting about it seems a bit weird, even if accurate.

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20 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I was going to say a series versus one book seems odd.

it does not surprise me though, Sanderson is insanely popular with regular SFF readings. You have to remember what a tiny slice of fandom this site is. 

Sanderson is very popular, but it is interesting how popular he is with "relatively" (and that "relatively " is doing some heavy lifting here) few readers. His overall sales are very good, but his sales-per-book are not exceptional by historical measures and they are pretty low compared to GRRM, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett or Patrick Rothfuss (who's sales are near parity with Sanderson, but that's of 2 books and a novella versus 22 novels and a handful of novellas).

Sanderson's success is relatively modest compared to multiple authors during the 1990s, when Feist, Williams, Goodkind, Jordan, Pratchett, Brooks and Eddings were all running at comparable or considerably higher sales levels, but outstanding for the 2010s when a much more glutted market has seen very few authors doing sales that are in any way comparable.

I find looking at Reddit's Fantasy community is good barometer for what "normal" SFF readers are reading, and Sanderson and Rothfuss are kind of omnipresent there with common discussions of major legacy authors (like Tolkien and Jordan, Pratchett slightly less). The only area where it deviates from commercial success is with the ever-present discussion of Erikson, which given Erikson's far lower sales profile than the other authors mentioned is a bit odd.

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23 hours ago, Werthead said:

I find looking at Reddit's Fantasy community is good barometer for what "normal" SFF readers are reading, and Sanderson and Rothfuss are kind of omnipresent there with common discussions of major legacy authors (like Tolkien and Jordan, Pratchett slightly less). The only area where it deviates from commercial success is with the ever-present discussion of Erikson, which given Erikson's far lower sales profile than the other authors mentioned is a bit odd.

I've never looked at Reddit's Fantasy community (or anything else on Reddit) but that doesn't surprise me. Please correct me if I am wrong, but my guess is that posters on the Reddit boards would draw heavily from people who also play a lot of fantasy video or computer games. And my perception of Erikson is that his books would especially appeal to so-called "geeky" persons who are part of a gaming or role-playing community while the other authors you mentioned would have more fans who were not connected with that demographic. 

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2 hours ago, Ormond said:

I've never looked at Reddit's Fantasy community (or anything else on Reddit) but that doesn't surprise me. Please correct me if I am wrong, but my guess is that posters on the Reddit boards would draw heavily from people who also play a lot of fantasy video or computer games. And my perception of Erikson is that his books would especially appeal to so-called "geeky" persons who are part of a gaming or role-playing community while the other authors you mentioned would have more fans who were not connected with that demographic. 

Not any moreso than here, I'd say. Reddit is no longer the new hotness and as a lot of other fantasy message boards have withered and died, so a lot of people have moved to Reddit (Westeros is unusual in that it has retained quite a loyal following of people willing to discuss other fantasy, TV shows etc). A major difference is that an enormous number of SFF authors, even somewhat older ones, have a regular Reddit presence and they're certainly not gamers, people like Janny Wurts for example.

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On 2/29/2020 at 10:02 AM, Werthead said:

Reddit is no longer the new hotness and as a lot of other fantasy message boards have withered and died, so a lot of people have moved to Reddit (Westeros is unusual in that it has retained quite a loyal following of people willing to discuss other fantasy, TV shows etc).

Is there a particular Reddit page where SFF fans post regularly? Or is posting activity spread out across numerous pages, from what you've seen?

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