What I'm looking for is a statistic about the percentage of
total novels sold that are written by the top x authors.
I don't care over what period, or what x is (except 1 of
course).  

The ideal answer would be, for one recent  year in the US, 
what percentage of total novel sales were due to the most
popular 20 writers?

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Request for Question Clarification by hummer-ga on 26 Jan 2004 13:14 PST

Hello bugbear,

Is 1994 recent enough?

1994 - 70% fiction sales - 5 authors:
Grisham, Clancy, Steel, Crichton, King

Regards,
hummer

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Clarification of Question by bugbear-ga on 26 Jan 2004 13:33 PST

1994 would be fine,  but could I have a source too?  And 70%
is a suspiciously round number...

---

Request for Question Clarification by hummer-ga on 26 Jan 2004 13:38 PST

Sorry, I should've just posted the whole thing to begin with, I guess
I was just worried about the year.

Bestseller Lists and Product Variety:
The Case of Book Sales
Alan T. Sorensen
"The dramatic increases in title output in the 1990?s were roughly
concomitant with an increase in the concentration of sales among
bestsellers. From the mid-1980?s to the mid-1990?s, the share of total
book sales represented by the top 30 sellers nearly doubled (Epstein
2001)."
"In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by
a mere five authors: John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, Michael
Crichton, and Stephen King (Greco 1997)."
http://www.stanford.edu/~asorense/papers/bslists.pdf

hummer

---

Clarification of Question by bugbear-ga on 27 Jan 2004 06:27 PST

Ok, this will do as an answer.

Hello bugbear,

I'm glad to hear that the link I found is ok - I did try to find at
least one other link for you, searching such sites as "Publisher's
Weekly", but I haven't had much luck in regards to your specific
question.

Bestseller Lists and Product Variety:
The Case of Book Sales
Alan T. Sorensen
"The dramatic increases in title output in the 1990?s were roughly
concomitant with an increase in the concentration of sales among
bestsellers. From the mid-1980?s to the mid-1990?s, the share of total
book sales represented by the top 30 sellers nearly doubled (Epstein
2001)."
"In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by
a mere five authors: John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, Michael
Crichton, and Stephen King (Greco 1997)."
http://www.stanford.edu/~asorense/papers/bslists.pdf

Additional Links:

Book Industry Statistics:
"Here are some interesting facts and figures about the book industry."
http://parapub.com/statistics/

Some Facts and Statistics:
"What follows is some information related to the book publishing
business.  This information has been gleaned from a variety of
sources, including the New York Times and the American Booksellers
Association"
http://www.narrativemagazine.info/pages/pub_facts.htm

International Publishers Association: Statistics on Publishing:
http://www.ipa-uie.org/

The Book Industry's Best-Seller Lists:
What are they, and why do they matter so much?
http://slate.msn.com/?id=3504

Bestsellers Lists 1900-1995:
http://www.caderbooks.com/bestintro.html

Thank you - if you have any questions, please let me know.
hummer

Google Search Terms Used:

"book sales" statistics percent "bestselling authors"
"book sales" statistics percent "bestsellers"
"book sales statistics"
sales "bestselling authors"
statistics "bestselling authors"

fine work

I have not been able to find the statistics you need, but I wanted to
point you toward a resource that you may find very useful. This is a
93-page paper entitled "Best and Worst of Times: The Changing Business
of Trade Books, 1975-2002." It contains numerous observations about
the increasing influence of "brand name" authors in the book market.
Below are some excerpts, with a link to the paper itself (in pdf
format).

"Consolidation has occurred in every sector or role of the book
business: retail, wholesale, distribution, publishing and libraries
(e.g., the budgetary emphasis on aggregated databases as opposed to
individual book purchases). The only exception is in the role of the
author. Consolidation in the publishing function is visible in the
bestseller list. In 2000, 83.5 percent of the best-selling titles on
the weekly lists of Publishers Weekly were from only five companies.

[ . . . }

"The overwhelming majority of spaces on the annual fiction bestseller
list are taken up by brand names. The phenomenon has become much more
pronounced during the last two decades."

[ . . . ]

"The book business today is highly consolidated on every front, save
that of the author and the book itself - just recall the 122,108
individual titles published in 2000. Thousands of small publishers and
self-publishers are responsible for producing many of them, but the
titles populating the bestseller lists tell a very different story. Of
the books appearing on PW?s weekly bestseller lists during the year
2000, 83.5 percent were published by only five companies - Random
House, PenguinPutnam, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, AOL Time
Warner."

[ . . . ]

"The pattern was set: a handful of fiction writers would reappear on
the list year after year and dominate it."

[ . . . ]

"Seven publishers - Random House Inc., Bantam Doubleday Dell, S&S,
HarperCollins, Time Warner, Putnam Berkley, Penguin and Hearst -
accounted for 87 percent of the hardcover bestseller slots and 82
percent of the paperback slots in 1995.82 Since then, Random and BDD
have combined, as have Penguin and Putnam. (Recently Putnam was
'combined' even more - it was eliminated as part of the corporate
name, although it still e xists as an imprint.) PW?s comment that ?one
can clearly see how few opportunities are left for midsize and smaller
publishing firms? [to make the bestseller list] is even truer now."

[ . . . ]

"In 2000, five companies - Random House, PenguinPutnam, HarperCollins, Simon
& Schuster and AOL Time Warner - accounted for 83.5 percent of slots
on the weekly hardcover bestseller lists and 78.9 percent on the
weekly paperback lists."

[ . . . ]

"The huge inequity between the select few - books by brand-name
authors and books that have been 'anointed' to be 'made' -  and all
the rest is very troubling. If one could do the impossible - a study
of how money, in terms of advances and marketing budgets, is allocated
to each book on a publisher?s list in any given year - it would speak
volumes about the distortions of today?s business."

[ . . . ]

"Brand names clog the bestseller list, but many more people are buying
those books than had bought their equivalents twenty-five years ago."

National Arts Journalism Program
Best and Worst of Times: The Changing Business of Trade Books, 1975-2002
http://www.najp.org/publications/research/best/images/best.pdf

===================================

Here's a quote from another article that might be of interest:

"Consider the following: Between 1986 and 1996, 63 of the top 100
best-sellers in the United States were written by just six authors:
Clancy, Grisham, King, Michael Crichton, Dean Koontz, and Danielle
Steele. During this same period, the top 30 best-sellers doubled their
share of the total of books sold in this country, so the fortunes of
American publishing have been riding largely on the sales of just a
few authors. If these authors were to join forces, their combined
sales would dwarf those of most publishing houses."

The American Prospect Online: Bibliosophy 
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/2/stossel-s.html

Bugbear,

This doesn't answer your question in the slightest but does offer a
little insight into how bestseller culture has affected the publishing
industry.

A friend of mine is a writer of long standing. He has over a hundred
books to his name and all have sold well, though his only 'bestseller'
was a pulp novel that sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in the
summer of 1976. He is what is known as a b-list author, a solid one
but b-list nonetheless, and was thus mostly ignored by the publishers
who were increasingly only interested in the next big bestseller.

This state of affairs deteriorated rapidly. When he sold all his own
copies of one of his children's books at the launch party, he asked
the publisher for more, only to be told that they'd already sold out.
Naturally he was very happy that the entire print run should sell out
in a couple of weeks, so he asked when the book would be reprinted.
The answer was that it wouldn't.

In short his solid track record of selling out print runs, albeit much
lower ones than the big names attract, meant nothing. The publishers
were only interested in big budget blockbusters with high risks but
potentially high returns. The numbers people have mentioned above
explain why they should think that way, but the end result is that the
bread and butter stuff doesn't matter any more.

Poe

Thank you, bugbear, for the nice note, rating and tip - I'm happy you
are happy. Sincerely, hummer