Your Mother Was Right
Tiffany Jonas at Aio Publishing passes on the following statistics, courtesy of David Koehser:
Of the 1,200,000 titles tracked by Nielsen Bookscan in 2004, 950,000, or 79%, sold fewer than 99 copies. The next 200,000 titles sold fewer than 1,000 copies, meaning that only 50,000 titles sold more than 1,000 copies. In 2005, only 10 titles sold more than 1,000,000 copies, and fewer than 500 titles sold more than 100,000 copies.
With payout so unlikley, no wonder the standard advance for a first book is a meager $5,000.
Best regards,
Alan