It’s here! The paperback of “How NOT to Invest” arrives (tomorrow). I am looking forward to being out and discussing the book in all of the usual places. I will share some excerpts this week, along with a few stories about how it came about.
The world of publishing has changed since “Bailout Nation” was published in 2009. I learned A LOT about how the publishing business pricing and sales now work.
Here are a few weird factoids:
-Hardcover books are a mostly United States phenomenon. The rest of the world gets the paperback on the same date (March 18, 2025) as the U.S. hardcover;
-Just 4% of books account for 60% of the profits. (Jennings); Only 2% sell more than 5,000. (Countercraft)
-The hardcover “release” price of $32.99 is an anchor number; almost all new books sell at modest discounts almost immediately;
-Paperback list price is $24.99; and it’s mostly at list price — $23.51 is the cheapest I have seen it so far;
-New hardcover books can be found at or off.
-99% of titles printed will never sell enough copies to recover all the costs associated with creating and publishing them. (Forbes)
-It is not a great business for authors as its all on spec; you have no idea what your sales might be; most finance/business books sell less than 5,000 copies.
-Authors make $5-10 per hour of writing, editing, etc. for a book with meh sales; okay sales push that to $10-20/hour; decent numbers moves that to $25-50/hour. Good sales (50k-100k units) send you to $100-200 per hour.
-Books become lucrative when they cross 100,000 total unit sales — and those books have chance at selling for years into the future.
Here is the breakdown of sales by category (Hardback, International Paperback, Ebook, Audio) from the original publishing date through April 30, 2026 (pre-paperback):
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Order the paperback today: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, Hudson, or wherever you buy your favorite books!
