Books do sell

Well of course I write for the big bucks, huge prestige, and pure adulation of millions of fans. While the limos, champagne on first class flights and attractive strangers constantly opening their bank accounts and boudoirs to me gets tiresome, having my own line of fashion apparel saves me from having to shop for clothes. Oh wait, that’s some other kind of writer. I write for professional publications. Sorry, lost in fantasy for a moment… from “Why I Write for Publication” KQWeb, May/June 2001

A good friend sent me a blog post written by Seth Godin - “Why Books Don’t Sell.”  In the post, Godin explores the odds of writing a “hit” book. He concludes “...we see that 85% of all traditional books published last year sold fewer than 5,000 copies each in their format. Those are extraordinarily bad odds.” 

In my daydreams, I write a single book that sells so well that I can live richly from the royalties and never put fingers to keyboard again. If I remember correctly, J.D. Salinger did this with Catcher in the Rye. My writing hero.

I, on the other hand, have written and published six books with international publishers, two second editions, and one self-published little volume between 1997 and 2015.* I made about as much in royalties each year as I did from a single speaking engagement or workshop. Was my time wasted? Was I a failure as a writer as Godin seems to suggest since I never really sold an immense number of copies?

While the authors whose names appear on the best seller lists get the fame, my assumption is that most of us who are serious writers write for groups far down the length of the long tail. My books were not written to be read on the toilet or while sunning on the beach. The primary audiences were school librarians, K-12 teachers, and school administrators. A couple titles might have been marketed to parents of K-12 students who were interested in how educational technology might impact their kids. It was never my intent or aspiration to appear on any best seller list. I don’t know the exact numbers, but my books in their niche sold well. Well enough anyway for the publishers to ask for more titles and second editions.

What did make publishing books an economic benefit to me primarily came with the reputation I gained as an author garnered the attention of organizers of conferences and staff development coordinators of educational workshop. As I mentioned, I made more money speaking at a single conference than I did from an entire year of book royalties. I always joked that conference planners made the assumption that if one could write, one could also talk. I guess I must have done well enough since kept getting asked to present at nearly 200 conferences and educational organizations over the course of my career. Thanks, in large part, to my professional writing.

Oh, I did find copies of my books in a couple surprising places. The Singapore National Library had one of my books in its catalog when I spoke there on the occasion of its grand opening in 2005. But probably my proudest moment was when I found a copy of one of my books in the education section of the local Barnes & Noble - and a grandson was with me who asked if I was that Doug Johnson. 

Books do sell, Seth. They sell ideas. They sell feelings. They sell stories. They sell reputations. They sell joy - for both the reader and the writer. They may not always sell in a commercial sense, but when the right audience is found, every book sells.

*

• Indispensable Librarian: Surviving and Thriving in School Media Centers in the Electronic Age, Linworth 1997
• Indispensable Teacher’s Guide to Computer Skills, Linworth 1998.
• Indispensable Teacher’s Guide to Computer Skills, 2nd ed. Linworth 2002.
• Teaching Right From Wrong in the Digital Age: An Ethics Guide for Parents, Teachers, Librarians, and Others Who Care about Computer-Using Young People, Linworth 2003. (Awarded a 2003  "outstanding achievement in parenting materials" from Parent's Guide to Children's Media Inc.)
• Machines Are the Easy Part, People Are the Hard Part: Observations on Making Technology Work in Schools. Beaver’s Pond Press, 2004.
• School Libraries Head for the Edge. Linworth, 2009
• The Classroom Teacher’s Technology Survival Guide, Jossey-Bass, 2012
• Indispensable Librarian. 2nd edition, ABC/Clio, 2013
• Teaching Outside the Lines, Corwin 2015