How many copies did Sahara actually sell? As many as the publisher says it did, according to the LA Times. “Publishers are notoriously reluctant to divulge sales numbers, and the complex, arcane nature of bookselling makes it hard to determine how well or badly a title is doing,” writes Josh Getlin. “Publishers routinely withhold full sales figures, saying the information is proprietary. The only people legally entitled to know those numbers are authors and their agents.”
Apparently, most books don’t sell well, even losing money for the publisher, so insiders keep real sales figures, if they can be known, to themselves. If an author claims his book sold 100,000, you have to trust him. There’s no public record to verify it.
The classic pattern is that the bestselling authors’ profits actually pay for the midlist authors. In other words, Jim Baen never made a nickel out of my books. John Ringo and Lois Bujold subsidized me.
I figure with Amazon and the whole bookscan process we should be getting closer to knowing how many books are being sold.
Yes, headway is being made. I suppose what we need is cooperation from the publishers more than anything else.