Yesterday, my book "The G.O.S.P.E.L. of Winning Strategy" hit the mark of 5,000 copies sold.
** At first, I was disappointed… **
Because from a financial perspective, the book is a financial disaster.
It took me six months to write the book. The opportunity cost (for the time and effort spent) was £200,000 plus.
And this is before the marketing budget and promotion effort.
As you can imagine, selling 5,000 copies is far from breaking even.
I would have generated more returns if I had done more consulting work or spent more time in my stock trading.
This is perhaps why, in author forums, the prevailing wisdom is that
"Don't write to make money!"
Because book writing doesn't make money in general…
Yes, I know JK Rowling sells millions of copies…
So does Simon Sinek…
And many other authors…
But these people are exceptions, instead of norms.
Apparently, the odds of success in book writing are extremely low.
April Henry, in Sep 2022, tweeted:
"OMG. In the Penguin Random House / Simon & Schuster anti-trust trial, it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. LESS THAN ONE DOZEN!"
It's beyond belief!
Aren't the first 12 copies bought by yourself, your parents, your spouse, and your friends? And 50% of the titles are like this???
And this is Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster!! The two BIG publishers with a HUGE marketing budget, WIDE distribution networks, and ARMIES of experienced experts.
Imagine the statistics for small and independent publishers!
Indeed, selling books isn't easy. The odds of making money are frighteningly low.
According to Writing Cooperative, only 0.4% of titles hit the mark of selling 100,000 copies or more.
ZERO POINT FOUR PERCENT!!
Furthermore, based on Publishers Weekly's data, only 0.02% of titles sold over a million copies.
Yes, sadly, 99.98% of us won't be a millionaire by selling books.
This is a depressingly low odds!
Do you know the chance of getting hit by a random car on the street is 0.27%?
This means you are 10x more likely to be hit by a random car than becoming the next JK Rowling!!
** But now that I think of it, selling 5,000 copies isn't that bad.**
Doesn't this mean about 4,000 people have read 'The G.O.S.P.E.L. of Winning Strategy' (assuming 80% of people who buy the book actually read it)?
4,000 people is a LOT of people.
It can fill 75% of the Royal Albert Opera Hall.
When I took my strategy class at LBS, the class capacity was about 80 people. So 4,000 people means I have filled 50 strategy classes. AWESOME!
Now, let's assume 75% of people who have read it actually buy the messages within. This means 3,000 people are going to implement the winning strategy principles.
And assuming people do strategies every 2-3 years. This means for the next 10 years, there will be another 12,000 winning strategies in the world.
This is the power of leverage! The book allows me to reach out to thousands of people and, over time, generate tens of thousands of winning strategies.
It's impossible in my lifetime to generate 12,000 winning strategies by myself.
But the book is a multiplier. By sharing the ideas with people, more people can embrace them – and it multiplies the impact!
Even if only 10% of these strategies would successfully improve the EBITDA by a million dollars, the overall economic contribution would be 10% * 12,000 * $1M = $1.2B.
Over One Billion Dollar!
Not bad at all for six months of work, eh?