Recently on Twitt/X I got caught into a discussion of how books sell or don’t, and realized that most people have not a clue of how books sell, why books sell, and what it all means.

Since this is knowledge earned by hardship — for 20 years I hung by my ankles from the tree of trad pub to gain this wisdom! — it’s not surprising people don’t know. But it is time we talked about it. Publicly.

Part of the reason to talk about it is because some of it applies to indie selling, where frankly I’m terrible at it, and there’s reasons I am terrible that are perhaps non-defeatable due to my personality type. And I know there’s a lot of other people like me.

But also we need to talk about it because there’s a perception that “Books don’t sell” = “there isn’t a market” or “Books don’t sell” = “Writing is terrible.” Neither of those is true, and trying to fix the problem from that end will destroy you and your confidence and writing to no purpose.

So, before I tell you how books sell or don’t, let’s tackle the “It’s not selling because I’m not good enough.”

I grew up with actual, for real “genius cultists” but our culture is such that almost everyone is a genius or “quality” cultist. So, let’s define that bit, shall we?

A genius cultist is someone who believes if you have sufficient genius — talent, quality, whatever — you’ll become massively successful regardless of training, practice, knowledge, and despite ALL OTHER FACTORS.

My parents were ABSOLUTE genius cultists. How so? They were very disappointed the first time I SAW a piano because I couldn’t play it. Note that it was the first musical instrument of any kind I had even seen. But if I were a genius, I would be able to play it the first time I saw it, and do so flawlessly. Since I couldn’t, they didn’t flip to ‘needs lessons’ but to “Has no ear for music” and “must be prevented from even casually singing, because will always be awful.” (Turns out I find in my fifties, I’m completely normal. Not a genius, and can’t sing very well because I never tried to/was prevented from. BUT not abnormal in any way.)

Now, this is crazy cakes, and the reason I’m using that example is because the crazy cakes is so completely obvious there. But the reason they thought this is because they grew up in early-to-mid 20th century when there were movies that showed genius as working that way.

They were the same way about every other talent that requires both ability and practice. And most people are that way too, in less obvious ways about things like writing or painting or drawing.

Our culture is so infused with the idea of “Genius” that we routinely confuse “Hasn’t learned to do thing x” with “Has absolutely no talent.”

There is also the bizarre idea that if you’re not selling — whether to the public or to editors — it’s because “you’re not enough of a genius.” If you were a genius, even though you just sent a romance short story to a science fiction publisher, they would totally buy it, because they’d be in awe of your awesomeness. Note this is crazy cakes.

It’s a close cousin to “if my book were good enough it would sell” even though it’s just a single short story, it’s completely miss-tagged, I’ve never promoted it, and it’s a weird cross-market which no one is looking for.

THE FACT SOMETHING ISN’T SELLING OR HASN’T SOLD IS NO REFLECTION ON THE QUALITY OF THE PIECE.

So, first, let’s analyze how things sell, shall we? You have various components. We’re going to reduce them to:

Product; packaging; distribution; market.

Product: this is where quality comes in. Of course you should make the best product you can. What is best? Well… there things get slippery. Let’s put a pin in it, shall we? For now, we’ll say it’s “free of mistakes, errors and shoddiness” but yeah, there’s more to it.

Packaging: The product should be attractively packaged. What does that mean? Well, if you’re a consumer of the type of product you’re trying to sell, you know what appeals to you. But you should also be aware that you might not be a normal consumer. (All the people who say “I never look at covers” should take a bow. Because they do. They’re just not aware of it/mildly embarrassed by looking, so they don’t want to admit they do.)

Distribution: Here things get more complex. Because people can’t buy what isn’t there. More importantly, people can’t buy what they don’t know it’s there.

Market: HUGE pin on this one, because it doesn’t matter how good your product is if there is no market for it. Imagine you have the best air conditioning system in the world, but you can only sell it in the arctic. You might make a sale or two for buildings with specific problems, but then you’re stuck. Because there’s no market. Of course, most cases are not that extreme, but then you get into other problems.

So, first, TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING and the hard truth about it:

1- In traditional publishing, you only have control about the initial product, and even in that, your control is limited. Why is it limited? Because I had amazing rate of sales. I sold 1/2 of the proposals I sent out. This is outrageous for a midlister. (Towards the end of my trad career I sold 100% which is unheard of for non-bestsellers. But the question is, was it because I’d internalized the parameters of what publishers would buy? Don’t know. Can’t tell you.) This means that, okay, perhaps one of my rejected books would have sold better than the accepted ones. BUT there is no way to know, because all I could control was what I sent to the gatekeeper, not what the gatekeeper bought.
1a- Publishers bought things they thought would sell.
1b – Publishers, ALL OF THEM, do absolutely no market research.
1c – Publishers will buy according to their perception of what sells, not what actually sells. As bizarre as this sounds, they often fall for the marketing hype of other publishers; analysis by magazines like Publisher’s Weekly — where I see the holes in the reasoning at a cursory look — etc.
1d- what publishers buy is often faddish and consensus driven, which is why periodically they go to war against a particularly genre or subgenre: say, cozy mysteries, or space opera. And sometimes the war is driven by some article defining this genre or subgenre as “stupid” and the people at publishing houses wanting to pretend they geniuses by refusing it.
so:
2- After your book gets accepted and it’s turned in, you’re at the mercy of the publisher’s perception of how well it will sell. A lot of things go into this, including their perception of YOU as an author. Brazen extroverts often do much better as authors, because they sell themselves better to the publisher. If you go in announcing you’re better than sliced bread, the publisher will tend to believe it, particularly if you dress well/present yourself as confident and put together. (Think salesman/sales techniques.) But there’s also the perception of your book. So, say the publishers are convinced (they are, though I could deconstruct the process for them) that fantasy sells better than science fiction. They’re going to give less attention/worse covers/ smaller print run/less publicity and less push to science fiction. Because they expect to make less money out of it.
2a. Attention — I had books published that no one except the copy editor read. And sometimes I was doubtful about the copy editor, which is why I started hiring my own. If this happens to you: it’s a major flashing sign that your publisher really doesn’t give a hang about your book, because they don’t think it will pay them back for the effort.
2b. Worse covers – The cover will often be assembled by a newly hired or non-paid intern from museum pictures/stock sites/etc. OR it will blatantly copy the cover of a genre book that actually is nothing like yours. (Not plagiarize, but copy the same elements.) Some covers (No, seriously) are actively repulsive, which is when you start wondering if your publisher hates you and is trying to kill your career. Here I waggle hand. The line between stupidity and malice is infinitely shaded, and the indication is that some people in that office might hate you, but mostly that they think so little of you they don’t care.
2c. Smaller print run – If the publisher doesn’t think the book will have great profit they do the “Standard printrun” whatever that is. Used to be 10k books. Now only the Lord knows. But the point is, the minimal printrun will recoup the publisher’s cost. It also won’t sell more than that. Oh, look, it could. Sometimes ebooks catch on. But publishers suck at tracking ebook sales, because their formula tells them that’s 10% of print (It was, in the early oughts) and that’s what they use, not actual count (which is actually difficult to get if you have multiple books/authors. But not impossible. Just difficult. OTOH they might not know how to do it.)
2d. Publicity – you know you’re not expected to sell if you’re not assigned a publicist, or at least have a talk to the house’s publicist. For most of my books/series, I didn’t KNOW the house HAD a publicist. They will put an ad for your book in Publisher’s Weekly. Which doesn’t sell books because readers don’t read Publisher’s Weekly. It just tells other houses “Look how deep our list is.” (Ditto Locus and other such publications.)
2e. Push – Pus is where the publisher tells stores how many of your books to stock. This is done by the house reps. I’m not sure HOW it’s done, now, but it used to be the salesman went to the store and said “We have high confidence in this book, it’s our headliner. We’re paying for the author to do a 10 city tour. We’re printing 100k copies. You want to stock at least 100.” That was for a book, maybe two a month. The rest of the list was “we also have these. You can stock some if you wish.” What happened to those is that if the bookstore liked the cover they might order two.

CONCLUSION: for traditional publishing: if you or your book’s genre or subgenre didn’t somehow convince the publisher you were a future, guaranteed best seller, your book would/will fail.

It didn’t/doesn’t actually matter if the book was pure spun gold between the covers, because no one will actually read it. And no one includes the house, which bought it either on proposal or by reading the first few chapters and flipping to the end. You could be the second coming of Alexander Dumas rolled with Agatha Christie, if you’re given a cover so repulsive even you don’t want to look at it, you won’t sell. If there are only two of your books per store, you won’t sell, and in fact the store might never UNPACK THEM and put them on the shelf.

That’s the brutal truth.

When Indie authors say “I went indie for the control” people tend to translate to “doesn’t want to be edited.” And that might very well be true, but the reality is that if you were trad before and you go indie, it might also be because “D*mn it, if I fail, I’ll do it on my own terms.”

Again, keep in mind what I described above really has nothing to do with genius, or even ability, practice, study, or HOW GOOD YOUR BOOK IS. Your amazing book might never be accepted by the publisher because, oh, hermaphrodites must have designer pronouns, or use feminine pronouns, and “everyone” knows that. And you refuse to do that. So it’s never bought. The end. Or they buy it, but cringe at it, are afraid of what their boss/colleagues/old college buddy will say, and so it is given the “will never sell” treatment. And it will never sell. Regardless of how good it is.

It has nothing to do with quality, just with how it’s handled.

So, Indie solves all of that, right?

Insert maniacal laughter.

It solves problem one: You can write whatever, which means you’ll enjoy the process more, by writing what you care about.

However, note the example I gave above. Suppose you really want to write gen-modded human hermaphrodites (I don’t know why! Perhaps you were dropped on your head as a baby. Or you got really mad at a bestseller at 14 and are still so salty that this must be done) how will it sell?

I don’t know. What I know is that only part of it will have anything to do with the quality of the piece.

So, let’s list out the factors in selling Indie. You’ll recognize some of them from above:

Product, Packaging, Distribution, Publicity, Market.

1- Write the best product you can. Still a pin on this, because we’ll circle back to it. However, for the love of bob, get a proofreader at the very least.
Structural editors are a gamble. It’s hard to find one whose head works like yours, and if it doesn’t you can make things worse by following his/her opinions. Keep that in mind. But proofreaders are a must. And if you have trusted friends, get them to do a first read, and ask them what they liked/didn’t like, rather than what is wrong. Wrong is subjective. Which character you loved/hated; what parts made you laugh/cry etc. are also subjective, but less so, because if six our of ten readers love the person you want them to hate, you’re doing something wrong. (Unless they love to hate them. If you guys want I can give you a list of questions for first readers.) Anyway, try to make sure you are telling the story you want to tell and not bogging people down in typos, spelling and grammar.

2- Packaging. This includes covers. Even I, who am the world’s worst marketeer, spend hours looking at covers of the best sellers in my sub-genre on Amazon and then field-testing proposed covers on my close-in fans.
Look, covers MATTER. If you think they don’t it’s because you’re lying to yourself. They matter even to you.
Others here have done recent posts on covers. Go read them. But make sure your sf book isn’t packaged with a textbook look, for instance. AND don’t be afraid of AI — don’t go crazy for it either. Most AI still requires work and modding after — because the questions from Amazon aren’t aimed at you. They’re aimed at people putting up AI generated books, which you can identify at a glance. At the rate of like 100 a day from one person. No one cares if your cover started with an AI generated image. And the copyright thing is complicated, but boils down to “You can’t take copyright for AN AI because it’s not a person.” However there’s other things, like don’t use publicly generated covers (for a variety or reasons) or covers you can’t claim OWNERSHIP on. If you need to have an artist finish the cover. Our Cedar does that work for reasonable rates. (Yes, I do too, but mostly I do it for me/for fun/for friends who can’t afford to pay. If you absolutely can’t pay, do ping me. Remember I might take a few months, because at that level it’s a hobby, and my life doesn’t seem to be getting any less crazy.) Anyway, make sure your cover looks like nowadays covers (which changes) for your type and subtype of book. And test it, if you’re cover blind.

3- Distribution – To Go KU or Not that is the question.
Look, I go KU because I found in the past the “wide” distro sells almost nothing and because I want to enable people to discover me.

Is it worth it? I don’t know. I intend to revisit this shortly, because things have changed and there’s the possibility of my own store, which would change everything.

HOWEVER let me tell you right now — and yes, these are things I’ve seen people do — that stupid distro tricks will backfire. This includes: Not having an ebook. (Despite what trad pub thinks, the ratio is 10-1 ebooks to paper books, regardless of how many surveys, questionnaires, etc. tell you otherwise.) AND Not being on Amazon. I don’t care if Amazon is evil bad and sacrifices babies and blends puppies. It’s the ecosystem most people go hunting for story in. If it’s not there, you’re losing 99% of your readers. Don’t come crying to me when it fails to sell.

Publicity — Dear Lord. If there’s anyone less qualified to talk about this, I have yet to meet them.

I suck at publicity. I suck so bad that the only thing I don’t do is wear a sandwich board that says “don’t buy my books.”

This btw is a problem for both trad and indie. In trad, I didn’t want to “bother” my publisher, so I never asked questions, or got intrusive, or even asked them for brainstorming sessions on the next book, which, yes, bestsellers do. Part of this is that I assumed I could only do it after I became a bestseller, instead of “that’s how you become a bestseller.” Partly at least on the brainstorm thing, this is because my creative process is highly intense and personal: I run into a hole a spin story, as opposed to try to get people to tell me what to do next. (Though I’ve found I like showing snippets. Go figure.) Partly, it really was “I don’t want to bother you. You’re busy.”
Unfortunately these translate in publisher’s — and people in general’s — minds as “I don’t think I’m very good, so I don’t buy me/push me.”

Now I don’t know about you, but being a crazy introvert, I still can’t run around saying “Buy me. I’m the best thing that happened to reading since Harry Potter/Heinlein/Pratchett.” I can’t. I know too much about how good other people are.

BUT if you can? It will make you a success in both trad and indie. THAT is the magical formula.

After that there is a bunch of other things. The main reason people never buy your book is that they never know it EXISTS. So there are ads, targeted ads, market research, metrics, etc. etc. etc.

I’ve seen other writers fall down that rabbit hole, and I’m here to tell you taken to an extreme, you just stop writing. Instead, you’re going around selling your one book, and nothing ever happens for the others.

Also, at another extreme, you fall for all the “how to sell” gimmick workshops and programs. These like “how to sell to publishers” are mostly not very good. There are exceptions, but people telling you how to sell aren’t making most of their money from selling. That’s about it. So, take with massive grain of salt. A truckload.

However some publicity is needed. And I suck at it. I’m going to try to get my assistant to look at possibilities, what to do, etc. I might have to pay her more. But she might also not have the time for it. In my case, because I have them, I might just corrupt one of my fans into doing market research on publicity for me.

However, always remember that publicity runs up hard against MARKET.

Market:
What if there isn’t a market for gen-geneered hermaphrodites? Yes, yes, the example is loony. It’s also the monster book (200k words) I’m finishing, so deal. You can use any other example: funny alien hunters, gonzo space opera about criminals in a noir vein, great heist mysteries, etc. etc. etc.

In Indie there’s always a market, sure, but that market might be three crazy people in India who don’t even speak English, let alone buy ebooks.

So–

So, nothing. It depends on what kind of writer you are. If you are a writer who can look at market analytics and come up with an underserved sub-genre that has a significant number of readers waiting for it? And then you can write that book to order?

You’ll do well. This has nothing to do with the quality of the book. Only the fact that a lot of people want that kind of book and can’t (literally) get enough of them to read. So even if your book is half-assed and has a lousy cover, they’ll buy it and read it, and tell all their friends there’s a new one.

(Keep in mind that this is actually how you analyze it. Books with lousy covers and not very spell checked, who still have 2k reviews one month out, and are highly ranked.)

But what if you can’t write to spec? Or don’t want to? (I CAN. I’ve done write for hire. For people like me it has a price though. It starts eating large parts of your — for lack of a better term — soul, and induces permanent block.)

Well, then it become more complicated. Say what you really want to write are, yep gengineered hermaphrodites, but half of the readers won’t touch them because “gender weirdness” and “Must be porn” and–

No matter how clear the description, you’re going to lose sales just on the concept. The market might or might not be there, but most people won’t open the book to know.

(Yes, I WAS dropped on my head. WHY?)

And then there’s complications. When trad pub killed cozies as cozies, a lot of people grew up who don’t know what cozy mysteries ARE (hint, Agatha Christie) so they think cozies are craft mysteries, or small town mysteries, or … witch PIs? The public is trained to read/look for those. Trying to sell your old-fashioned mystery is difficult because the public might love it, but they aren’t TRAINED to look for it. The same applies to non-mil-sf space opera. The public would probably love it. It used to sell really well, but the public isn’t even trained to look for it, and the Amazon search system doesn’t make it easier.

Again, nothing to do with quality or the internals of your book: if people don’t know to look for it, they’ll never even open it, to find out you are a genius of writing.

Oh, in indie publishing, even if you do relatively well, you have to KEEP DOING IT. I.e. you have to release at least every other month, better every month. Length isn’t a thing, so short stories and novels can be mixed. But one series is best. People like LONG series. (Saves looking for the next to read thing, which is a significant investment.) And if your shorts aren’t related to your novels, people will get confused and decide you’re all short stories, so there’s a cost. Anyway, just something to consider. One short story out is the worst possible “advertisement.” The algorithm means people won’t even SEE it listed. (Then there’s gaming the also-boughts, etc. Which I don’t bother with, because it’s not how I personally work, but I probably should.)

Anyway, if you want to write to the highest possible market and can control it, Romance sells best, then mystery, then fantasy, then science fiction, in absolute numbers. (K-lytics tells you the various gradations of sub-genres and are affordable.) If my husband lost his job tomorrow and I needed to support us, I’d try to crank out a romance a month. Okay, I’d fail, because writing sex makes me giggle, and those are the highest selling romances. BUT I could write a cozy mystery a month, probably.

And that’s all I have to say for now, though I’m sure your questions will make me write further pots.

The point is, you don’t have to be a genius. And it has nothing to do with some abstract “quality” of your book. Once you pass the minimum of quality “it’s easy to read, and tells a story” the success or not of your tale has more to do with “did anyone even know it existed, and like the packaging enough to open it and read a few sentences?”

Now, after that, yes, quality comes in. But quality is defined as being enough like the genre/subgenre to attract readers and different enough to stand out, as well as everything else. And that’s a heck of a high wire act.

Now after you sell two or three books — to the public — whether you’ll have a long career does hinge on how good the books are, how much you can weave a good tale and keep the reader hungry for more.

So, yeah, don’t neglect that. But remember that’s not all of it. And if you’re not selling at all, that’s probably not the cause. Fix the stupid stuff first — like horrible covers — and see if that helps.

Then we’ll turn to the big stuff.