The average book sells how many units?

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

I talk about this article often, but I forgot where it was from that I got some of my average publishing numbers, which is then backed by the Publisher's Weekly report cited. 

The Cold Publishing Equations: Books Sold + Marketability + Love

The average book sells 3,000 units over its lifetime. If you assume an average sale of $20 (which is high but whatever), you get that the average book does $60,000 in revenue. That's not the real number though, because Ingram and other distributors take 55-60% of that. Let's just say 50%.

That means the average book to a publisher makes $30,000 in its lifetime.

My top two titles of all time have each sold over 3,000 units and I'm just a single human. Pixie Dust sold almost 1,000 units in its first year. The Monster anthology has done 1,500. Cthulhu is Hard to Spell has already done 1,000+ and it's not even out yet. Based on the numbers above, I feel pretty good about my little company. 

And remember, 3,000 is t…