sales

Does being on the Colbert Show really provide a bump—a critical leap that vaults a writer, or a politician to superstardom? The answer: That looks like a bump, Conan. In fact, being on the Colbert Report increases sales by 10 times on average. That bump doesn't last forever, but, let's face it, what does?

The awards, which recognize the titles independent booksellers most enjoyed handselling during 2007, will be presented at ABA's annual Celebration of Bookselling. Fiction winner: A Thousand Splendid Suns. Non-fiction: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Author Tobias Buckell writes about the effect free ebooks has been having on genre sales:
These are not ‘information wants to be free’ people, but entrepreneurs interested in gaining a wider reach for their fiction. They’re disparate in politics, technology outlooks, and so on. They’re not part of some e-conspiracy, but a range of working writers in today’s field.

Having one hundred and fifty million copies of his books in print worldwide and being the most borrowed author in the library just isn’t enough for James Patterson. He wants bigger numbers, more sales. He wants the children. He wants their mothers. He wants book world domination.

Preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show that bookstore sales increased 1.1% last year, to $16.77 billion. I don't think this means more books were sold than last year, since inflation eats up that 1.1%. But it's better than most years of the decade so far, where sales have dropped year to year.

In other statistics, 77.7% of titles sold in the U.S. last year sold less than 100 copies, where as 0.03% sold more than 100,000.