Strange as it may seem, we know of no reliable, publicly-availableway to get comprehensive statistics for book sales at this time. The only database with reasonably accurate information is NielsenBookScan, which reports point-of-sale data, but even that claims to represent only 75% of all retail sales.BookScanis a comparatively recent (2005), very expensive subscription service, used primarily in the industry. [UCLA] does not have a subscription.
If you are looking for current sales figures, you can use Amazon.com to get a general idea, although it relies on very recent numbers, so the figures are not really accurate. The “Author Central” feature on Amazon.com does provideBookScandata to current authors only.
See AlsoHow Many Books Do You Need To Publish To Make Money? - Letter ReviewBook Sales Figures: How Many Copies Can You Expect To Sell?How to Write a Bestseller (and Why That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does)Printed books have a positive future, a new survey indicatesPrior to BookScan, the only source for anything like market data for some individual titles was Best Seller lists compiled by publications such as theNew York Times. These are not based on point of sale figures but on the selections of bookstores, from which they generate edited estimates of rankings. These published lists don’t indicate how many copies of a book have sold from those bookstores or the relative sales among books on the lists. Since 2009, BookScan does supply weekly “book charts” to the Wall Street Journal, but they're just best seller lists.
The bottom line is that only book publishers have comprehensive sales data, and they don’t usually make the information public.
-Harvard Library, "Where can I find detailed book sales figures or statistics?"
Possible Strategies
- Contact the publisher and/or author directly. For more historical data, the information may be available in archival collections.
- The record for each book on Amazon.com includes information on its ranking in sales compared to other books offered by Amazon.
- Book articles in Publishers Weekly and other magazines/newspapers may give figures.
- Check for the number of editions, which may speak to sales success. (Copyright page, National Union Catalog, WorldCat)
WorldCat (OCLC FirstSearch) This link opens in a new window
OCLC FirstSearch catalog includes citations for books, journals, manuscripts, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, computer files, newspapers, slides, videotapes, archival material, etc., in libraries around the world. General Research Catalogs; Library Online Catalogs; Online library catalogs; Library catalogs; OCLC; World cat; FirstSearch; First search,WolrdCat, world cat, world, wolrd cat, wordlcat, worldcay, world cay, worldcar, world car, world cap
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