My books sold almost half a million copies. Publishers don't want the next one.

That title is both factual and clickbait. Let's talk about the importance of context in traditional publishing discussions.

First, the facts. Sales figures for my most recent middle grade books from a royalty statement (period ending December 2023):

• SOME BUNNY TO LOVE (published Jan 2021): 25,943

• THE DOG’S MEOW (published Jan 2022): 61,365

• MY OTTER HALF (published Jan 2022): 306,155

• WADDLE I DO WITHOUT YOU (published October 2023) : 100,577

That’s a total of 494,040 books sold in about three years. Before these, I had published over a dozen novels, the sales for which ranged from 5,000-15,000 copies over the years (including the ones published way back in 2014-2016). I’d never earned a royalty check before, not in nearly a decade of being an author. To say I’m pleased with these numbers is a massive understatement.

I went on submission with another novel (also middle grade) in October of 2023. My agent included the sales figures I had at the time (I believe MY OTTER HALF had just hit that 300,000 mark).

Everyone passed. (Well, a few are ghosting us. This seems to be a new trend—editors simply not responding to agents regarding manuscripts they actually requested to read—but that’s a rant for another newsletter.)

If you’d asked me a few years ago if one of your books sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies, do you think you’d have any problems getting another book deal? I would have laughed and said no way. It’s the same reaction I would have had back in 2011 when I got my first book deal, those starry-eyed days where I assumed that meant I was in and all my novels would published forevermore.

All this is to say that the title of this newsletter is factual.

However.

Like all headlines and tweets, it’s lacking a whole lot of context. It’s designed to ruffle feathers and get clicks. Another example of a statement that holds some truth but lacks context:

Half of the books published every year sell less than a dozen copies!

Sensational! Also? Not true! Publisher’s Lunch debunked this one. Turns out that figure came from a DOJ lawyer, and it was framed as a question to a PRH witness:

Q: Well, let me just ask it straight out. Would it surprise you to know that half of those 58,000 books sell fewer than one dozen books?
A: My book was in that category. Sorry.
Q: And if I had more time, I'd ask you to name the other 24,000 and a half there--excuse me, 29,000, there's my math. Would it surprise you to know that 90 percent sell fewer than 2,000 books?
A: I didn't study it.
Q: You just don't know?
A: I didn't study it. I don't think there's any evidence on the record. I would not be surprised.

So, yes, this figure of less than a dozen copies was brought up in the trial. But the basis for this lawyer’s question is not part of the record, and no one in the industry has been able to find anything to back up this figure. It’s a fact that the lawyer said this in court. The figure itself? Not a fact.

As you’ve probably figured out, I’m writing this after reading the viral No One Buys Books Anymore and the many, many, many rebuttals that have followed. That title certainly is clickbait, and I suppose if we look at all the information that came out of the PRH/DOJ trial without context (like we did with that “less than a dozen copies” “fact”), it feels true. But it absolutely isn’t. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone who’s even marginally aware of the BookTok phenomenon can utter the phrase “no one buys books anymore” unironically.

That said, I also completely understand how authors, both aspiring and published, felt an impending sense of doom when the trial pulled back the curtain on traditional publishing and revealed what we’ve all known in our hearts must be true: the industry is kind of a shitshow and our odds are better in Vegas.

And yet, I have this knee-jerk reaction when anyone says something like I don’t understand why anyone chooses trad pub over self-publishing or trad pub is dead, Substack is the future! Y’all do realize someone has rung the death knell for this industry every decade, right? Because…ebooks. Because…Amazon. Because…paperbacks. Keep going back, and you’ll find another change that heralded the end of print books and literature as we know it. But it’s still here! Traditional publishing is evolving, not dying. And while I’ve absolutely been known to call publishers out for increasingly expecting authors to do our own marketing, I also fully agree with this post that yes, publishers actually do a LOT for authors. I mean, look at my recent sales.

Which brings me back to context. This is another quote from the trial that got a lot of attention:

If I look at the top 10 percent of books… that 10 percent level gets you to about 300,000 copies sold in that year. And if you told me I’m definitely going to sell 300,000 copies in a year, I would spend many millions of dollars to get that book.

— Madeline Mcintosh, CEO, Penguin Random House US

Imagine if I’d seen that quote, looked at my sales numbers for MY OTTER HALF, looked at my current project languishing on submission, and taken to Twitter to shout oh yeah? My book DID sell 300k copies in a year and I can’t even sell my next one! Including to PRH!

I would have been, as the kids say, showing my whole ass. Here’s some context.

Most books that get that kind of print run in their first year are hardcover, and I’m sure Mrs. Mcintosh was talking about hardcovers in that quote. Those retail at around $24.99. 300,000 copies is $7,497,000.

My books are paperback. And exceptionally cheap ones at that. See, the bulk of my sales came from Scholastic clubs and fairs. Those books are printed as cheaply as possible to make books more affordable for families. The Scholastic fair was my absolute favorite thing in middle school. I remember going with a certain amount of cash from my parents and leaving with an absolute boatload of books. I love that my books are low cost because it means more kids can afford them (and others). MY OTTER HALF was $7.99. 300,000 copies is $2,397,000.

Context! Mrs. Mcintosh was definitely not talking about my situation when she said what she said. Not only were my paperback sales significantly less in net profit for the publisher in comparison to a hypothetical hardcover which sold the same number of copies, a significant portion of my sales weren’t trade (bookstores), but book fairs. Yes, at the end of the day a reader is a reader and a sale is a sale, but to publishers, where these sales were made is a huge piece of the puzzle when they’re trying to form a picture of an author and her backlist to determine whether or not to make an offer, and for how much.

When you see another think piece with a clickbait title despairing about the state of publishing, books, reading, and the pointlessness of being an author, please remember that the title definitely lacks context, and the piece itself very probably does as well. Especially if—and I do not mean this in a mean or vindictive way—it was written by an industry outsider. Because as the trial made clear, the industry and its processes are cloaked in secrecy, and there’s no way an outsider can even have full context when these little ‘factoids’ about publishing get out there.

Readers buy books every day. Publishers acquire novels every day. Getting a book deal isn’t easy, but it’s certainly not impossible. I got my first book deal in that fun period of time where the viral think pieces du jour were all about how in a decade, there would be virtually no brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries would be 90% computers because print books were doomed and ebooks were taking over.

Yet here we are, a decade later, and I can still find a few copies of my books on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.

Here’s the advice I got back then, before that book deal, that kept me going: all you can do is keep writing the best books you can.

That’s what I’m going to do next. How about you?