Why BookScan Is Different from Book Sales (Which Are Different from Royalty Statements)

“Ugh, we’re doing math in a literary newsletter?” I’m deep in the novel revision mines—Haunted Hills coming to you next year!—so this article will be on the shorter side. I wanted to relate a little publishing industry gossip and then explain why book sales can be so confusing. Some Market Trend Gossip The word on the street, as the kids no longer say, is that Romance and Romantasy sales are starting to tank. The market is so oversaturated, and so much of what publishers are putting out is bad, that readers are being put off. I’ve heard about bookstores overrun by a flood of books with the same tropes, Big 5 editors overwhelmed with barely distinguishable submissions, and foreign publishers uninterested in buying rights. Adult non-fiction is also doing poorly, which has apparently been true for a few years.My thought: The Romantasy issue was predictable since publishers rushed to throw huge advances at anything called Romantasy and much of it was written by authors “pivoting” from…