book sale essay

Everything You Wanted to Know about Book Sales (But Were Afraid to Ask)

An In-Depth Look at What/How/Why Books Sell

Publishing is the business of creating books and selling them to readers. And yet, for some reason we aren’t supposed to talk about the latter. Most literary writers consider book sales a half-crass / half-mythological subject that is taboo to discuss.

Most literary writers consider book sales a half-crass / half-mythological subject that is taboo to discuss.

While authors avoid the topic, every now and then the media brings up book sales — normally to either proclaim, yet again, the death of the novel, or to make sweeping generalizations about the attention spans of different generations. But even then, the data we are given is almost completely useless for anyone interested in fiction and literature. Earlier this year, there was a round of excited editorials about how print is back, baby after industry reports showed print sales increasing for the second consecutive year . However, the growth was driven almost entirely by non-fiction sales… more specifically adult coloring books and YouTube celebrity memoirs . As great as adult coloring books may be, their sales figures tell us nothing about the sales of, say, literary fiction.

This lack of knowledge leads to plenty of confusion for writers when they do sell a book. Are they selling well? What constitutes good sales? Should they start freaking out when their first $0.00 royalty check comes in? Writers should absolutely write with an eye toward art, not markets. Thinking about sales while creating art rarely produces anything good. But I’m still naïve enough to think that knowledge is always better than ignorance, and that after the book is written, writers should come to publishing with a basic understanding of what is going on. Personally speaking, my knowledge of the fundamentals of publishing helped me not even think or worry about book sales when my own book was published last year . And since I need a reason to justify the time I’ve spent dicking around on BookScan, here is my guide to everything you wanted to know about book* sales (but were afraid to ask).

*Because “books” is an impossibly large category covering everything from Sudoku puzzles to C++ guides, I’m going to focus on traditionally published fiction books in this article.

What is a book sale?

Wait , you say , everyone knows what a book sale is. Ah, yes, but, what this section presupposes is… maybe you don’t? Actually, one of the things that makes the conversation about book sales so confusing is that there are several different numbers thrown around, and often even people in the publishing industry completely confuse them. Here are four different numbers that are frequently conflated:

1) The number of copies of the book that are printed.

2) The number of copies that have been shipped to stores or other markets like libraries.

3) The number of copies that have been sold to readers.

4) The Nielsen BookScan number.

These numbers can all be wildly different. It’s not uncommon at all for a publisher to, say, print 5,000 copies, but only sell 3,000 copies to bookstores/other markets, of which, 2,000 copies are actually sold to customers. Meanwhile, BookScan shows 600 copies sold. And we haven’t even gotten into ebooks yet (more on that later).

What’s the actual number of books sold? Well… basically a combo of 2 and 3, plus ebook and audiobook sales. A publisher sells books to retailers like bookstores, but also to some institutions like libraries. However, retailers normally (though not always) have the right to return unsold copies. So some copies that are “sold” will eventually be unsold. (On author royalty statements, a certain amount of money is always withheld as “reserve against returns.”)

While this is basic, it’s surprisingly common for authors and publishers to either intentionally or unintentionally confuse these numbers: brag about their sales while citing the print run, for example. On the other hand, the media almost always references the BookScan number without any context about how wrong that number can be.

What Is BookScan and Why Should We Care?

In my hypothetical above, the Nielsen BookScan number, is the least accurate. It’s the furthest away from the “true” sales of the book. And yet, if you read any articles on book sales it is precisely the BookScan number you will see. This is because while publishers and authors (via royalty statements) have access to the real numbers, they are almost never released to the public or to rival publishers. Thankfully, there is Nielsen BookScan, an industry tracking tool that records point of sales based on ISBNs. (Yes, this is the same Nielsen of TV’s Nielsen ratings.) People in publishing can use BookScan to get a general sense of what books are selling, the health of the industry, or tear their hair out in frustration while looking up the sales of their rivals.

So Why Can BookScan Be So Inaccurate?

Nielsen BookScan counts cash register sales of books by tracking ISBNs. A clerk scans the barcode, and the sale is recorded. Pretty simple.

So why can it be inaccurate? To begin with, BookScan only tracks print book sales. Amazon and other major ebook vendors do not release ebook sales, so basically no one has any idea how those are selling (outside of publishers tracking their own sales). Ebook sales vary wildly from book to book (and genre to genre), but are typically less than 1/3rd of sales. For certain genres, especially science fiction and romance, ebooks can be as much as 50% or more.

Even for print books, BookScan can only do so much. BookScan gets data from most big bookstores (including Amazon and Barnes & Noble), but it doesn’t get all of them. It also doesn’t track library sales — which can be significant — or any sales that don’t go through a bookstore. BookScan itself claims to track 75% of print sales, and that may be true overall. For a popular literary fiction title, for which library sales or hand sales are a tiny percentage, BookScan is probably getting at least 75% or more of print sales. For other types of books, BookScan might record as little as 25% of print sales. Small press books, for example, can sell most of their copies at conferences, book festivals, and direct sales on the publisher’s website or at readings. BookScan misses all of that.

Lastly, BookScan was only introduced in 2001, so numbers for any books published before this millennium are completely inaccurate. (I’ve seen people bemoan the small sales of, say, Infinite Jest compared to some recent bestseller without realizing that.) All that said, BookScan does a good job showing general trends in the industry and seeing which books are doing better than others. But you should keep in mind that total book sales are perhaps twice that of every number listed.

How Much Does an Author Make Per Sale?

So let’s say you bought a book (like, oh, how about Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel ), how much would the author make? Author royalty rates vary, but the industry standard is about 8% of the cover price for paperbacks and 10% for hardcovers (escalating to 15% if sales go well). Ebooks, which have variable pricing, are 25% of the publisher’s take. Now, as an author I’d love for those rates to be higher, but I do think it is important for authors to understand that the majority of the cover price doesn’t go to the publisher. Well over 50% of the cover price goes to the retailer that sells books to customers and the distributor who gets the books to retailers. There is plenty to be said about whether the publishing model could be more efficient, if middlemen could be cut out, etc. etc. But when certain corners of the writing world — such as certain self-publishing ideologues — scream about how publishers are ripping off authors and taking 90% of the pie for themselves, that isn’t really accurate.

Don’t Most Authors Make No Money From Sales?

Correct. Most authors do not make any money off of actual book sales because most books do not “earn out” their “advance.” Traditionally published authors are paid money up front, before a book is released. This “advance” is money given up front to the author out of future royalties so that the author can buy ramen and pay the overdue electricity bill. “Earning out” means the book has sold enough copies that the total royalties (not the total sales) match up to the advance, thus providing a (most likely tiny) trickle of royalty money to authors for all sales thereafter.

This ‘advance’ is money given up front to the author out of future royalties so that the author can buy ramen and pay the overdue electricity bill.

Here’s an example: Writer von Author writes My Big Literary Novel and Big Publishing House Press pays her $50,000 dollars as an advance. The cover price of the book is $20 dollars and her royalty rate is 10%. (In reality it would be more like a ~$25 hardcover at 10–15% followed by a ~$15 paperback at 7–10%, but I’m simplifying.) If the publisher sells 10,000 copies of the book, the total sales are $200,000 and the author has earned $20,000 from royalties… except that she was already paid $50,000 so she is actually at negative $30,000. She doesn’t have to pay anyone back either though, the publisher takes the loss. However, if the book sells 25,000 copies, then the author would earn back her advance and at copy twenty-five thousand and one, she would start earning $2 per book sold.

How Does Publishing Survive If Most Books Don’t Earn Out?

To begin with, publishers survive on a handful of hits. A 50 Shades of Grey here or a Gone Girl there make up for a lot of low-advance books that don’t sell well. This is similar to how movie studios survive on a few massive blockbusters to offset the costs of movies that don’t earn what is expected at the box office. Additionally, the publisher makes money before the author does. Even if the distributor and retailer take, say, 65% of the sale price (and it can be as much as 75%), the publisher is getting 25% to the author’s 10%.

When an article talks about how some huge advance given to a debut author and/or celebrity author won’t earn out, that doesn’t actually mean the publisher won’t make money. ( Here’s a blog post breaking down the example of Lena Dunham’s huge advance .) In fact, publishers may give huge author advances on books they know won’t earn out as a way of paying a de facto higher royalty rate.

Take our example above. If My Big Literary Novel sells 20k copies, the author still hasn’t earned back her advance yet the press is taking in $90,000 (35% of cover price minus 50k advance). Of course, the press also has to pay for the printing costs of the book as well as any marketing costs or money spent on cover art before it can even pay the various employees that worked on the book… but you get the general idea.

WHAT DO BOOKS ACTUALLY SELL?

Okay, Let’s Get to the Dirt: What Does an Average Book Sell?

Probably not surprisingly, the answer is… it really depends. The first thing that writers need to understand is that book sales — like advances — are all over the place. This is true even for individual authors. It’s not unheard of for an author to get roughly similar critical acclaim for their first three novels, yet have them sell 10k, 100k, and 10k respectively. Publishing is full of luck, timing, and unpredictable trends. (I mean, adult coloring books? Really?) And even then, publishers give dramatically different amounts of support and marketing even to books published by the same imprint.

That qualification aside, most fiction books published by a traditional publisher garner somewhere between 500 and 500,000 sales. Sometimes less, sometimes more.

Can You… Narrow that Down a Little?

Ignoring the outlier megastars like Stephen King or runaway hits like Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See , most novels published by a big publisher BookScan somewhere between 2,000 and 40,000 books. Most short story collections issued by big publishers get about half that: between 1,000 and 20,000.

You can scale this down for publisher size. An independent small press is averaging more like 500 to 10,000 for novels and 300 to 2,000 for story collections. A micro press is more like 75 to 2,000 regardless of book type — at this level, the author’s “platform” and fan base matter more than if the book is a novel, story collection, or poems — with outside successes getting above 5k.

For debut books, you could cut all those numbers in half. Do keep in mind that this is after at least a year of sales. If your book just came out this month, don’t panic yet (and don’t check BookScan for a long time, if ever).

So the Average Novel Sells 20,000?

Well… no. Like baseball salaries or box office returns, book sales are heavily skewed by the minority of books that do really well. If you go into your local bookstore and look at all the books on the various tables, most of those will BookScan between 2,000 and 40,000 after a couple years of sales. The big books by the big names on the tables will get between 100,000 and a couple million.

However, most books struggle to find adequate distribution, much less coverage. Most books do not get placement on tables, and many do not even get to many bookstores at all. The majority of traditionally published novels sell only a couple thousand, if that, over their lifetime.

What Constitutes “Good” Sales?

As with anything here, we need qualifications. What constitutes “good” sales is entirely dependent on what type of book you are publishing, what size your publisher is, and what your advance was. 5,000 copies of a short story collection on a small press is a huge hit. 5,000 copies of a novel from a big publisher that paid a $100,000 advance is a huge disaster.

You also need to factor in the format. Selling 10,000 hardcover is worth more than 10,000 paperbacks. For ebooks, prices can be all over the place, even from a major publisher.

Qualifications aside, if you are a new writer at a big publisher and you’ve sold more than 10,000 copies of a novel you are in very good shape — as long as you didn’t have a large advance. It should be easy for you to get another book contract. If you sold more than 5,000, you are doing pretty well. You’ll probably sell your next book somewhere. If you sold less than 5,000, then you could be in trouble with the next book. (Although it is, as always, dependent on the project. If a publisher loves your next book, they may not care about previous sales.)

The smaller the press, the more you can scale down. One publisher of an independent press told me that most indie press books sell — not BookScan — about 1,500 copies, with 3,000 being good sales. Even then, the publisher stressed, an author selling 3,000 is really just paying for themselves. To be contributing to the operations of the press, they’d need to sell over 5,000.

What Do Acclaimed, Buzzed-About Literary Books Sell?

So let’s say you jump through the hurdles of writing a book, getting an agent, and selling it to a respected press, AND you become one of the handful of books that is well-reviewed in big outlets and buzzed about in the literary world. How many books will you sell?

Most people would be surprised at the drastic range of book sales even among the books that people are buzzing about. If you took the ten literary fiction books that all the critics, Twitter literati, and well-read friends are discussing, their BookScan numbers might range from a couple thousand to 100k. Last year, NPR looked at the book sales of the Pulitzer Prize finalists and found the books ranged from under 3,000 to low six figures.

If you took the ten literary fiction books that all the critics, Twitter literati, and well-read friends are discussing, their BookScan numbers might range from a couple thousand to 100k.

That’s a small sample though, so I went through the BookScan numbers for every fiction book listed on the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014 . I used 2014 instead of 2015 to make sure each book had at least 12 months of sales. No list is perfect, but the NYT list includes story collections and small press books alongside the big name literary authors and award contenders. 2014’s list includes names like Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, Marlon James, and David Mitchell as well as small press debuts by Nell Zink and Eimear McBride. It’s a good sampling of the “books that people are talking about” in the literary world.

The BookScan sales of those books literally ranged from 1,000 to 1.5 million, with an average (mean) of just over 75,000 copies sold per book. That 75k number is pretty skewed by the existence of Anthony Doerr’s runaway literary hit, All the Light We Cannot See, which sold over 1.5 millions of copies. (The next highest book was about 270,000.) If we remove the best and worst selling books on the list, we get a mean of 46,550 copies and a median of 25,000 copies.

(Once again, I’ll remind you that these are BookScan numbers for books published in 2014. The actual sales totals will be moderately to significantly higher depending on the book, and all of these books should continue to sell copies over the years.)

What If You Are a Finalist for a Major Award?

Let’s say you really hit the jackpot and are a finalist for the Pulitzer, what kind of sales would you get? Again, the range is huge. I looked up five years of nominees (from 2011 to 2015) and the range was 5,600 to over 1.5 million (yes, All the Light We Cannot See again). The mean was 250,100 and the median was 72,300. For the National Book Award, the mean was 178,600 and the median was 91,318

For comparison sake, I checked the finalists for science fiction’s prestigious Nebula awards. They ranged from 2,100 to 387,900 with a mean of 35,600 and a median of 12,300. That’s surprisingly less than the major literary awards, despite the frequently heard claim that genre fiction is more popular than literary fiction . (Although keep in mind that science fiction ebooks typically sell better as a percentage of total sales than literary fiction ebooks do.)

What Does a #1 Bestseller Sell?

On average, a lot more. I checked the BookScan sales for all the books that hit the #1 spot on the New York Times list in 2014 and the mean sales were 737,000 with a median of 303,000. The top selling book was, as you can probably guess, 50 Shades of Grey at nearly 8 million. But the lowest was only 62,700, meaning more than 50% of NBA or Pulitzer finalists sold better than it. In fact, a whole lot of the 2014 literary award finalists sold better than bottom 2014 best sellers. If that’s confusing, remember that this is the list of books that were the best selling book in the country for one week, not for the whole year. Sales of commercial fiction books are often far more concentrated than the sales of popular literary fiction books, the latter of which can have very long tails.

Once again, I want to stress that these totals are perhaps 75% of book sales and do not include ebook or audiobook sales.

What About Short Story Collections? No One Buys Those, Right?

It’s a truism in the literary world that no one buys short story collections, and that even when you sell a collection a publisher will only buy it so that your future novel will do better. I myself have always believed this to be honest, even though I wrote and published a short story collection . However, looking at the data it actually seems that while fewer story collections sell, the ones that do can sell almost as well as novels. The seven story collections on the NYT 2014 list had a median of 23,000 BookScan sales… only 2k less than the median novel. When I expanded the data to include short story collections from the 2013 and 2012 list, the average sales were 53k and a median of 22.5k.

So All the Publishers that Rejected My Collection Are Fools!

Well, no. Those are mostly collections by buzzed about debut authors or established older writers. As I said, fewer story collections sell (although fewer are also published) and the ones that don’t sell fail harder than novels. And there’s a cap on story collections. No story collection is going to sell millions of copies like the biggest novels. All of the authors whose collections I counted in the last section sold better as novelists if they had novels out. Since big publishers survive on the few break-out books, it makes more business sense to bet on novels or push authors to write novels instead of stories. Whether that’s good for the culture or the art of literature is another question…

Still, it was heartening for me, as a lover of short stories, to see that collections from authors like Junot Diaz, Alice Munro, and George Saunders can BookScan over 100k, and a collection by someone like Stephen King can reach a million. (In fact, having looked at a lot of sales data I’m convinced Stephen King is the best-selling living short story author in America and probably the world). More importantly, great short story authors like Kelly Link, Lydia Davis, Aimee Bender, Jim Shepard, and so on will BookScan between 10 and 50k… which is comfortably in the range of what acclaimed literary novels sell.

How Does Genre Fiction Compare?

I’ve talked before about how the idea that literary fiction is a tiny niche market and that the various genres sell more is largely a myth. “Commercial fiction” — which is not a synonym for genre — can sell a lot more, especially when we are talking brand name like John Grisham, James Patterson, or Danielle Steel. YA fiction is also having a much-discussed boom these days. But for most writers of adult science fiction, romance, fantasy, and the like, the numbers will be roughly what I’ve listed in this article.

How Does Non-Fiction Compare?

Non-fiction is an insanely huge category that encompasses everything from craft books and joke books to travel guides and memoirs. While there is some variation in average sales between different types of novels, non-fiction sales are entirely dependent on which of the 1,000 types of non-fiction books you are talking about. I’m afraid I just can’t help there, except to say that what you might think of as literary non-fiction — lyric essay collections, memoirs, etc. — will be roughly similar to the numbers listed here.

What About Self-Publishing?

Like non-fiction, self-published books vary so wildly that they can’t really be generalized. If you publish your book through an established press, you can most likely guarantee a certain level of professionalism, distribution, and hopefully coverage for your book. Self-publishing, on the other hand, contains both professional full-time authors who spend time and money marketing their books as well as people who just think it would be fun to put an ebook up on Amazon and never spend any time marketing. Overall, self-published books sell far far less (in part because the majority of the market is still print, and it’s near impossible for self-published print books to get a foothold in stores), but of course their cut of each sale is much higher.

Which Sells More: Hardcover, Paperback, or Ebook?

Another surprising (to me at least) fact from the data I looked at is that books quite often sell the same amount in hardcover and paperback editions. If a book truly takes off, the paperback sales will eclipse the hardcover many times over. But for most books that are published in hardcover first, the paperback sales will be close to the same. Perhaps that’s a feature of the ebook era where readers who prioritize an affordable option will often choose the ebook?

As for ebooks themselves, the sales aren’t available publicly anywhere so it is impossible to say. According to a recent survey, ebooks account for about 20% of the total book market . From talking to publishers and authors, it seems ebook sales are erratic and — as a percentage of overall sales — vary wildly from book to book, publisher to publisher, and genre to genre. To add even more confusion, ebook prices fluctuate a lot more than paperback or hardcover. It is simply hard to pin down. For most traditionally published books, the percentage of sales that are ebook instead of print is somewhere between 10% and 50%.

So What Does All This Meeeaaan, Man?

I often hear that fiction is basically just an irrelevant niche and no one reads books at all. Now that we’ve looked at the numbers, well… I guess it depends on your point of view. If the average well-distributed novel is BookScanning only 10,000 copies, that seems pretty niche. Then again, there are plenty of industries where sales of 10k per product would be respectable. And we have to remember that the actual number of sales might be 20,000, and then maybe 30,000 people have read the book since plenty of people use libraries, pirate, or borrow books from friends. Every year, dozens of new books sell 100k copies on BookScan, and a couple sell a million. A recent Author Earnings report suggested maybe 4,600 writers earn 50k a year off of book sales alone. Not so shabby, maybe, until you realize that about that many MFA students graduate each year. Then again, that’s just looking at book sales, and not money made from freelance writing, speaking engagements, teaching classes, or other author income streams. And honestly, even getting a thousand strangers to read something you poured your heart and soul is pretty okay. Bottom line; who knows what any of this means, but at the very least if you are a newly published or aspiring author you now know the world you’re going into.

As for me, I’m going to get back to work on a weird novel that will never sell, but, hell, is damn fun to write.

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IELTS academic task 1 sample essay 4: book sales by genre across time

Home  »  Academic writing task 1 sample essays & answer  » IELTS academic task 1 sample essay 4: book sales by genre across time

The bar graph above shows the total number of book sales for five genres of books for three years, from 2013 through 2015.

Across the three years, total sales of romance novels ranked highest, with more than 1500 copies sold. Second highest were books in the fantasy genre at approximately 1400 sold, followed closely by science fiction and then thrillers. Mystery books had the lowest sales numbers, at roughly 1000 across the three years. Only about two-thirds as many books were sold in the mystery genre as in romance.

Broken down by year, the graph indicates that 2014 was the slowest year for sales of romance and fantasy books. Romance was the most-sold genre in both 2013 and 2015. Sales of books in the mystery, thriller, and science fiction genres were slowest in 2015. Overall, combined book sales in all genres were highest in 2013, possibly indicating a decline in fiction reading during the three years shown.

(157 words)

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Do I Really Need to Op-Ed to Sell Books?

In the months leading up to the April 2022 hardcover release of my book, Some of My Best Friends , I tended dutifully to the rituals of prepublication. I sent a gamely cheerful email blast to my contacts asking them to please preorder copies. I plastered my website and social feeds with graphics of the cover art. I retweeted, with genuine glee, every photo of a galley copy spotted in the wild. I was going to be a model citizen of self-promotion, giving my debut a fighting shot at selling well.

But there was one directive from my publishing team that brought me up short: to brainstorm essays related to themes in my book, ideally keyed to the news, which could then be pitched to various outlets to coincide with publication. I took the instruction as I had all the others — if it helped the book, then of course I would do it. But after losing several Sundays to a blank document, I realized that mining for soundbites felt deeply at odds with the work I wanted to put into the world. I’ve seen fellow writers nail this task, and I admire my peers who seem to have a knack for it. But of the many challenges involved in producing and marketing a book, the one I find most intractable is the idea that writing promotional essays is always an effective way to support your book.

I understand how we’ve arrived at this point. In principle, the idea makes sense: If a writer has just churned out tens of thousands of words on a subject, surely they can cough up a few thousand more in order to reach a broad audience, establish authority, and sprinkle a trail that leads readers straight to the preorder button. Recent examples from the New York Times opinion section — perhaps the grail for promo essays — include an essay on Biden’s cognitive abilities , by the author of a forthcoming book on memory, and “ My Father, Ronald Reagan, Would Weep for America ” (Patti Davis, who just published a book about her parents called Dear Mom and Dad ), both of which offer a preview and a primer on the issues their books explore.

But in practice, such essays can make for a tricky genre, which embodies an expectation that shapes other parts of the promo process, from interviews to personal branding: that writers be ambassadors or educators for their books’ issues, even if those issues are incidental to the work. Reducing something to its buzziest takeaways is part of selling anything, and for subject-matter experts writing on topical issues, this distillation is more straightforward. But for a sizable cross-section of others — including essayists, memoirists, and fiction writers — the role of ambassador is an awkward fit.

Rainesford Stauffer is the author of An Ordinary Age and, more recently, All the Gold Stars . In promoting the former, a book on the cultural pressures that shape young adulthood, she was thrust into the role of “spokesperson on all things millennial.” As she explained to me, “Because millennial has become such a headline-y buzzword, it felt like everything could be spun through [that] angle.” Editors wanted her to pen essays with a generation-wars slant. Interviewers asked her why millennials are so slow to grow up. She hadn’t anticipated this pressure to be an “Author with a capital A,” performing total confidence in anything vaguely related to her book — a reported look at how milestones such as college and internships have become so prized that they’ve turned young adulthood into a “competitive sport.”

“For a long time, I felt like I was letting everyone down,” she added. “I couldn’t get to that place where I was ready to step up and say, ‘I am an authority on everything in [my book], from perfectionism, to work and burnout, to unpaid internships,’ when I am not any of these things.”

Lilly Dancyger, author of the forthcoming essay collection First Love , faced similar expectations while promoting her 2021 memoir Negative Space . The memoir centers on Dancyger’s childhood and the impact of her parents’ struggles with heroin addiction. But while doing press, interviewers would pose policy questions. “There was this assumption that because addiction was part of the story I was writing,” she said, “I should have deeply held and informed opinions about how society should handle addiction [and] treatment.” When planning the essays she’d pitch, Dancyger considered trying for a big, timely op-ed. “If I really wanted to get into some of the top-tier general interest publications, a topical, opinionated piece on that subject probably would have been the way to go.” But she ultimately decided that being a commentator would’ve felt disingenuous and — more importantly — was irrelevant to the book. Her priority was to give people a sense of who she was and what she cared about as a writer, which in turn provided a better glimpse of what her memoir had to offer.

Predictably, your risk of being cast as spokesperson increases if you’re writing on a subject (or from a perspective) that the publishing industry hasn’t previously given much space. Angela Chen, author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex , knew that she’d become an ambassador when her book came out. “There just aren’t that many trade books about asexuality, which means there’s more scrutiny and more pressure,” she said. Though Chen is a subject-matter expert, she notes that she “didn’t want to be only talking to an audience as an educator. I wanted to be talking to the people who are affected and to my own community.”

I felt a similar expectation to educate. My book is an essay collection about how institutions have learned to parrot the language of social justice even (or especially) when it isn’t sincere. That meant the news pegs on which I could hang my hat on were grim: public failures of diversity. Literary figures who were ripe for cancellation. The proverbial “racial divide,” a phrase that makes me think of nothing other than, reliably and inexplicably, an image of the Grand Canyon. I wanted to do whatever I could for my book, and I knew tackling these issues could be a shortcut to grabbing thousands of readers by the collar and teaching them my name.

But they were also subjects I found intellectually dull, creatively deadening, and artistically demoralizing. Again, I get the principle, even respect its mercenary logic: If I could make myself a mouthpiece for the biggest issues tangentially related to my book, people would be more likely to care. If I proved myself nimble enough to chase the ambulance, they would know to call my number. The problem was that none of these ideas felt faithful to the work I’d done or the kind of thinker I am — and I was horrified by the implication that they might be. If you stripped everything else away — the research, the jokes, the painstaking revision — was this really what my creative labor boiled down to? That we should cancel Joan Didion?

None of this is to say that the promotional essay is all schlock and mirrors. An essay can be deeply aligned with the concerns of a writer’s book, get published around the same time, and still be searing: Nicole Chung on the untenable financial costs of choosing the writing life ; Zadie Smith on thinking she’d never write a historical novel ; Stauffer on the perils of our ambition narratives . The writers I spoke to for this piece all developed ways to approach the task that felt authentic. Before his novel Appleseed came out, Matt Bell sent a list of essay ideas to his editors to make sure he was pitching things he felt both keen and equipped to address, like his book’s genre-fiction elements. “As much as possible, I wanted to be proactive in what that part of the pitch would look like,” he said, rather than letting others decide for him.

Setting limits can help ensure that a writer isn’t pushed into mining their work in uncomfortable ways. Taylor Harris, whose memoir This Boy We Made explores medical racism, disability, and genetics, published one essay about being a BRCA2-mutation carrier and then gave herself permission to step back. “After that piece ran,” she said, “I just had to remind myself that I don’t have to take on every opportunity related to breast cancer or genetic mutations.”

The balance is one I’m still figuring out. I know there are prospective buyers who long for an intrepid expert to lead them out into the racial divide — and I know I risk sounding precious when I try to describe why this isn’t the book I wrote, or how I want to sell the one I did. There’s so much creative potential in writers returning to the subjects of their books to drill down or build on their themes. But so much can get lost when the sole approach is to find the snappiest topical takeaway in a clear grab for attention.

Besides, how much difference does a media hit like this really make to a book’s fate? “It’s my sneaking suspicion that it does very little,” Bell said. Katie Gutierrez, author of the novel More Than You’ll Ever Know , also went into the process with eyes open, as published friends had advised her there’s not much an author can do to move the dial on sales. (That sound you just heard was a thousand publicists screaming.) Like Bell, Gutierrez was proactive about the essay-writing process, but recognizes that a title’s ultimate success is determined by other factors. “It depends on how much support you’re getting from the publisher versus how much you’re expected to do yourself,” she added. For someone with a slimmer marketing budget or less institutional backing, there may be more pressure to land that op-ed. Or, as the release of their paperback nears, to write the sort of essay they were meant to be writing when their book originally came out — even if that essay is a rebuttal of this whole exercise.

• self-promotion
• promotional essays
• book publishing

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Book Marketing Deep-Dive with Nick Stephenson: How to Go from $0 to $1k a Month in Book Sales

We hear from writers in the ProWritingAid community all the time that they find the prospect of marketing their books daunting. It requires a whole new set of skills and it’s hard to know where to begin. Facebook ads? Amazon ads? An author page? BookBub? There are so many options that many writers suffer from analysis paralysis and never even begin.

So, we reached out to one of our favorite book marketing experts, Nick Stephenson of YourFirst10kreaders.com to help us figure out the first steps to take.

Over to Nick...

How to Go from $0 to $1k a Month in Book Sales

How to boost your book sales, know your numbers, your book cover, your book description, your website, driving traffic to your content, traffic options, final thoughts.

By Nick Stephenson

Writing and publishing a book has never been easier – whole industries have sprung up to help support authors following their passions and building their career.

But just how difficult is it to get sales – especially as an independent author?

I’ve spent the last 6+ years helping authors grow their audience, sales, and exposure – and I’ve seen a lot of changes. But one thing that stays the same are the principles of marketing.

That is, getting someone’s attention, keeping it, and then having them come back time and time again to buy your latest releases.

It’s not “easy” (of course it isn’t) but, like anything, there are principles and frameworks you can follow to make it a whole lot less difficult.

So, in this article, I want to break down just how to go about building up your book sales to $1,000 per month (or more) – using proven strategies, tactics, and principles to help you get where you want to be.

And if you’d like to dive into this topic in even more detail, check out this replay of the live training session I did in August. I cover everything in today’s article (and a whole lot more) – plus a few “extras” I didn’t have time to include.

With that being said, let’s jump in!

Before we can start work on “getting traffic,” there are a few things to work out first. The first is understanding your numbers or, in other words, how much traffic you are actually going to need to hit your financial goals.

If we stick with the $1k per month target (which is entirely do-able), then it breaks down like this:

• $1,000 per month
• $33 per day (more or less)

So, if your books are priced at $4.99 (adjust accordingly) – and you’re getting a royalty of $3.50 on that – you need to sell 9 or 10 copies per day to hit your target. Doesn’t sound all that insurmountable, does it?

And it gets better…

That figure is if you only have one book . If you have multiple books, and readers buy more than one book from you, then you don’t need to find 9 or 10 NEW readers each day. The actual figure might be a lot less. Let’s take a look at an example from an author with, say, 6 books.

In this case, the author sees readers progress through his or her catalogue to the extent that each new reader doesn’t just spend $3.50 – they spend $7.50. More than double. Why is this so important? It all comes down to clicks and conversions .

Case In Point

The author with 1 book needs to bring in 9.5 new readers every day to hit $1k per month. The author with 6 books only needs to bring in 4.4 new readers each day. In terms of clicks, if we assume 10% of people who click through to your book page will buy (that’s about right) then it looks like this:

• Author 1: needs 95 clicks
• Author 2: needs 44 clicks

The good news here is that even if you only have 1 book, getting 95 clicks per day isn’t impossible (or even that difficult). And if you are working on expanding your catalogue – or already have several books – it’s even easier. Chances are, you’ll fall somewhere on this scale. The key point to remember is once you break it down into “how many clicks do I need” then your job gets a lot easier.

(And ninja tip – if you have a few books out there but aren’t sure what your “read through rate” is, just count up your reviews on each book and see how they compare to each other – that should give you a good idea).

So – we can work out a rough idea of how many clicks we need (and you can adjust up or down depending on your revenue goals) – but how do we get those clicks? And how do we make sure those clicks are actually doing something useful?

Let’s take a look…

Optimise for Conversions

Before we start sending traffic to our books and websites, we need to make sure that traffic is going to “do something useful” once it gets there. After all, there’s no sense spending all that time and effort getting clicks if those clicks don’t convert!

In most cases, we want our traffic to do two things:

• Buy something
• Join our email list (so we can sell to them multiple times later)

Both actions have tons of value for you, and in some cases you can get people to do both. But before we get to that, we need to make sure our “online assets” (books, webpages, etc.) are geared up to convert as many people as possible to do one (or both) of those two things.

The first place to cast your eye will be your book pages on Amazon and the other stores. In this case, we want as many clicks as possible to turn into sales – and there are two main things to look at…

Everyone knows (or hopefully knows) that your cover design can make or break your chances – but what makes a good cover? And why is it so important?

In a nutshell, the perfect cover won’t just help you convert more clicks into sales, it’ll help you get more clicks in the first place. Think about all the thumbnail book covers readers see when they’re browsing for something to read – if your cover isn’t quite right, you won’t get as many clicks.

We ran a little experiment to see how this worked in real life – and ran 20 million Amazon Advertising impressions across 3 different covers to see what worked.

Here were the three contenders:

Interestingly, the improvement in clicks (the “click through rate”) from cover 1 to cover 2 was close to 50%. Even more interesting, the improvement from cover 2 to cover 3 (which only looks to be a slight change) was nearly 50% again!

In other words, we nearly doubled the number of people clicking through to our book page by changing out the cover.

We also saw the conversion rate jump to around double between covers 1 and 3. Meaning, with our new cover, we were nearly 4 times more likely to get a sale each time the book was displayed with the new design. Not half bad!

But what made it such a big change? It all comes down to “what readers expect”.

For thrillers, readers expect an image that “sucks you in” – like a tunnel – and you see rather a lot of red text and bold fonts. Simple changes on the surface, but it goes to show that “having a nice image” isn’t as important as “giving readers what they’re used to”.

So, if you’re planning a cover design, make sure you research “what’s working” in your genre (as they’re all different). And don’t try to re-invent the wheel!

Your cover will get people to your “buy now” page – but the #1 influence on whether or not the reader, you know, actually “buys now” is the description. Or, in other words, what the book’s about.

The problem? Authors are good at writing stories, novels, and other long-form copy. What we’re not so good at? Condensing all that down into 3 paragraphs.

A problem I see all the time is authors who write a book description by simply listing out “what happens” in a blow-by-blow rundown of the book’s plot. This is great for a Wikipedia entry, but not so great for getting people to buy.

At the end of the day, your book description is sales copy – which requires a slight shift in mindset…

Example – Bad Book Description:

Set in Middle-earth, the story tells of the Dark Lord Sauron, who seeks the One Ring, which will help him rule the world. The Ring has found its way to the young hobbit Frodo Baggins. The fate of Middle-earth hangs in the balance as Frodo and eight companions begin their journey to Mount Doom in the land of Mordor, the only place where the Ring can be destroyed.

Summary: This is what most authors do. List out the main plot points. On the plus side, we’ve covered the main protagonist, antagonist, conflict, and stakes. But it’s not very interesting… It’s basically just a premise.

Example – Good Book Description:

Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring – the ring that rules them all – which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

Summary: the information we’re presented with is the same (e.g. – we know what the premise of the book is) but the language used gives us a better emotional connection to the characters and events that are about to unfold.

And again, we tried out a few different book descriptions with our Amazon Advertising experiment – and found that amping up the language (rather than focusing on plot points) helped us boost conversions by over 30%.

Which isn’t half bad…

And the other good news? This stuff is easy to change. If you decide you’d like to try out a cover tweak or a new description, all you need is a few clicks and you’re done!

Make Your Summary Shine

Your summary should be clear, readable and gripping. If you're updating your description, why not try using a writing tool such as ProWritingAid ? ProWritingAid is far more than just a grammar checker. Its Style Report highlights several areas of writing that should be revised to improve readability, including: passive and hidden verbs, over-reliance on adverbs, repeated sentence starts and emotional tells.

Your summary is your potential reader's first taste of your writing. You not only want it to tell them what your book is about, but also that you are a good writer .

In addition to getting sales from our traffic, we also want to grow an email list . When we want to launch a new book, run a promotion, or get reviews, our email list is the #1 resource for getting great results.

When people land on our website we want them to join our mailing list (so we can tell them about our catalogue and all our new releases). The way we do this is with Reader Magnets.

In a nutshell, instead of just asking people to “Join My Newsletter” (boring!) we need to offer something of value in return for that email address. For most authors, this means offering a short story, novella, bonus chapters, video / audio versions, or something else. Anything can work, so long as it’s related to your books – and it’s “interesting”.

To make this work, we need a dedicated webpage outlining our offer – a simple headline (e.g. “Get Your Free Book”), a description of what people will get, and a signup form. Once someone enters their details, they’ll be added to your email database and you can automatically email them a welcome message containing a link where they can get their gift.

The main focus is making that webpage – or “landing page” – as effective as possible. Which means removing all menus, links, and other distractions. Just the offer, an image of what they’ll get, and a signup button or form. That’s it.

That way, you’ll get about 40% to 50% of people join up – versus the 5% to 10% that you’d normally see on a generic “Join My Newsletter” page.

And – good news – if you sign up with an email marketing provider like Mailerlite or Mailchimp, you’ll get a free plan that includes built-in landing pages, so you don’t even need your own website at first. MailerLite email marketing software has an excellent free plan so you can get started without any cost.

With that all sorted – your book pages are optimised, your landing pages are good to go – it’s time to start driving some traffic there…

Types of Traffic

The first thing to remember – there is no shortage of traffic on the internet. You can either put in some time and work for “free traffic” or you can hop on down to the traffic store and buy some. (Note: this is the main reason why we want to know our numbers – if you know how much a reader will spend on your books, and what percentage of clicks turn into sales – you know how much you can spend on those clicks!)

In reality, you’ll do a little of both.

In the live workshop on August 20th, I’ll take you through all these in detail, but for now, here’s a run-down of some of the most effective methods. You don’t want to do all of these at once – just pick one or two at a time.

Free or Permafree Books

A free book gets downloaded 50 to 100 times more frequently than a paid one. If your “read through” is good, a decent number of those free downloaders will move through the rest of your catalogue (and join your email list). You can even set your book to $0.00 permanently (I’ll show you how in the workshop) and set that up to run on autopilot. Best part? It costs you precisely… nothing.

Search Engine Optimisation

Most people don’t realise, but Amazon (and the other online book stores) aren’t stores, per se. They’re search engines. If you can set up your titles, keywords, and category choices to target the right people you can see amazing results. Rule of thumb – try and narrow it down as much as you can! I’ll show you exactly how to do this in the live workshop (and when you register, I’ll send you some free videos explaining more about all this).

Joint Promotions

A simple way to triple your exposure is to team up with two other people who have similar-sized audiences. You can promote each book at a time, taking it in turns (e.g. during a launch or promo), or promote everyone’s books all at once. You can create boxed sets and anthologies (this is how I hit the USA Today Bestseller list) and you can even run contests between yourselves to boost your three audiences. When you find the right people, this can have HUGE effects (and, again, it’s free!).

You can do these solo, or with promo partners (see above). The premise is simple – offer a sweepstake prize that your target reader would be interested in (e.g. – a bundle of books, a Kindle, etc.) and post your contest up on some giveaway directories. There are hundreds to choose from – GiveawayFrenzy is a great place to start – and you’ll start growing a list of entrants quickly.

Offer each entrant your reader magnet and keep those people who click through to download it. Discard the rest. Once the contest is done, and you’re left with only the people who WANT to hear from you. Easy! And while these promotions do cost money (although not a huge amount), we found our cost per subscriber was about 10x lower versus paid ads. A great result!

Most likely, you’ll be looking at Amazon Advertising, Facebook Ads, and BookBub (self-serve) ads. These platforms allow you to bid for clicks, and you can set up campaigns to run 24/7. Each platform is a little different, and each has their pros and cons, but if you know how much you can spend on a click and still make a profit, you’ll be in a strong position. I’ll give you a full run-through in the live workshop (and in the free videos you’ll get when you register).

Email Blasts

You can also pay to get your book featured in book websites’ email newsletters, that often go out to hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of readers who like books like yours. Some are more effective than others, but you can “stack” these promotions up over a week or so to get the best results.

Those are some of my favorite traffic options. And, as I said, you only really want to focus on one or two at a time (so you don’t get overwhelmed).

Of course, we haven’t had the time to dig into each one – so if you’d like to learn more about all this (including more detail on understanding your numbers and optimising your books) then join me at YourFirst10KReaders.com .

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Lisa Lepki is Fictionary CMO and a former ProWritingAid employee. A word nerd, she loves the technical elements of writing almost as much as the writing itself. She is the co-author of The Novel-Writing Training Plan, Creating Legends: How to craft characters readers adore... or despise!, How to Build Your Author Platform on a Shoestring and 20 Editing Tips from Professional Writers.

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Friday essay: do readers dream of running a bookshop? Books about booksellers are having a moment – the reality can be less romantic

Senior Lecturer, Writing & Publishing, RMIT University

Disclosure statement

Rose Michael was previously the editor of Books + Publishing magazine.

RMIT University provides funding as a strategic partner of The Conversation AU.

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My mother and I wanted to open a bookshop. We signed up for a CAE course, which was cancelled when the bookseller who ran it went out of business. I learnt this later because I went on to work in a bookshop and the book business is a small world.

As are bookshops. And books. Worlds within worlds within worlds.

My first job was in hospitality. It was hard work; physical labour. I cased city bookshops, handing out my CV, dreaming of a different life. My new boss saw me coming: I spent my first day unpacking box after box. Stacking, shelving – book after book. He tried to teach me they might as well be bricks, albeit in pretty packaging. Not-so-fast-moving, never-moving-as-fast-as-booksellers-might-like consumer goods.

But “handselling”, that mainstay of the independent “High Street” book trade, was everything I hoped it would be. I loved – love – the aesthetic object of the book. The artefact at the heart of an exchange that is rarely as simple as a commercial transaction. (Except, you might say, when someone is buying something as a gift that says “I spent this much. I know this much about you.” But even then, it seemed we were engaged in a storytelling exchange. Swapping literary histories. Imagining reading futures.)

Read more: All hail the bookshop: survivor against the odds

It wasn’t only the book-based conversations with customers and colleagues that fulfilled my expectations. Part of the pleasure of bookselling was the sense of satisfaction I got in being a bibliotherapeutic matchmaker . Reader, I had been training for this my whole life.

Given the sense of community that coalesces around bookstores and the connection between people books can be a conduit for, it’s not surprising books about bookshops are popular. These stories are a genre unto themselves. They are invariably romantic, offering a different kind of (infinite) world within a (finite) world.

There are famous examples from fantasy, such as the wildly popular The Shadow of the Wind (2001), and closer to home, the wonderful adventure that is From Here on, Monsters (2020), both featuring antiquarian booksellers. Nonfiction books such as the 1970 classic 84 Charing Cross Road , a tale told in letters between a New York writer and a used book dealer in London, rub spines with historical novels such as The Bookseller of Florence: Vespasiano da Bisticci and the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance (2021).

More recently there has been a spate of translations. From The Bookseller of Kabul , first published in Norwegian in 2002, to Days at the Morisaki Bookshop , by Japanese author Satoshi Yagisawa, to Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop , Shanna Tan’s 2023 translation of Hwang Bo-Reum’s 2022 Korean bestseller.

These tales are not only set in bookshops, but revolve around bookselling itself. They describe the day-to-day work in detail, as meaningful: life sustaining and life-changing. A longed-for return to authenticity and more-than-economic exchange.

The reality is a little different.

In a 2019 essay for Overland aptly titled “Retail Therapist”, bookseller and writer Freya Howarth articulated the “desirable, intellectual, even romantic” perception of working in a bookshop and the emotional labour at its heart.

This non-unionised, highly educated, usually part-time and often under-employed workforce provided a particular service, she wrote. Booksellers care for customers: smile, listen, suggest. And retail work, Howarth argued, has historically been feminised.

The industry’s working conditions have made the news as a result of pay disputes such as a recent one at Melbourne’s Readings bookstores during negotiations over an enterprise bargaining agreement.

After a heated dispute, in which authors sent a letter to Readings calling for “a living wage” for staff, the bookseller became the second Australian bookshop to negotiate an EBA . It was hailed by the staff union as “one of the best retail agreements in Australia”.

Still, what was it some old-timer once said ? Find a job you love and you never have to work a day in your life. Howarth’s point is that finding a job you love – such as bookselling, or publishing; or I would add academia – may mean you work unpaid overtime for the rest of your life.

Read more: Saturday is Love your Bookshop Day. 5 reasons why readers keep coming back to independent book stores

Contradictory worlds

One of the most famous contemporary books about bookselling is undoubtedly the Norwegian bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul. Published in English in 2003 (translated by Ingrid Christophersen), this nonfiction narrative by journalist Asne Seierstad tells the story of self-made small businessman Shah Muhammad Rais and his family, with whom the author stayed for four months.

Rais’s store, which opened in 1974, was a gathering place for intellectuals, housing a vast collection of books on Afghanistan, as well as foreign titles – when he wasn’t hiding them around the city.

Rais was repeatedly arrested, interrogated and imprisoned for his views on censorship. Seierstad makes clear her subject’s belief in the power of books and the important role they play in education and liberation. Meanwhile, however, the eponymous bookseller’s two wives were confined to their homes.

Seierstad was in a unique position: as a Westerner she had an outsider’s perspective and was able to move between public and private, male and female domains. She made the unusual decision to write some chapters from different characters’ perspectives, which somewhat compromised the book’s status as nonfiction, but there was no mistaking her political point of view.

This real-life story took a turn when the family later brought legal action against the author. A Norwegian court cleared Seierstad of any invasion of privacy in 2011 and concluded the facts of the book were accurate.

But Rais is claiming asylum in the UK , with his family scattered across the globe. He has published his own version of his story: Once Upon a Time There Was a Bookseller in Kabul .

Books about bookselling in translation may be the ultimate escapism. They are not literary; they are about literature. (Though too over-the-top an affirmation of the value of books and reading risks the medium contradicting the message.) We read for insight into a world that is usually worlds away from “ours”.

However, there is a sparseness to the prose of these international titles that makes it hard to parse. Is the baldness of the language a stylistic or cultural characteristic of the original? Is it an aspect (intentional? accidental?) of the translation? Certainly, for me, it adds to their foreignness.

In Carsten Henn’s The Door-to-Door Bookstore (2020), translated from German by Melody Shaw and published in English this year, Carl Kollhoff delivers book requests direct to his reclusive customers – whose reading styles are humorously described and readily recognisable. Hares race through pages while tortoises fall asleep while reading.

When a young girl tags along on Carl’s rounds, playing havoc with his system of choosing books for customers, the message is clear: what we want to read is not always what we need. The friendship that develops is charming and heartwarming, with the oddball pair and their worthy work pitted against big, bad business when the boss’s daughter takes over the family bookshop.

(His book also reminded me of a dear friend who used to say there are courtly readers – who, like chaste lovers, never abandoned a book face down, stained it with wine, scribbled in the margins or dog-eared pages. And then there are those like me. Let’s just say my books have lived a life.)

It may be no coincidence that these newer additions to the genre emerged during, or soon after, the world’s long lockdowns. Many of us experienced a desperate desire to find windows onto a world beyond our own backyards . Invalids are often avid readers (perhaps most famously, Robert Louis Stevenson ) and COVID made patients, prisoners of us all. I would go as far as to say my pre-teen learnt to read, really lose himself in a book, during quarantine. Even when screen time was limited, his Kindle was always available – though the lack of access to physical libraries disadvantaged others.

What better place to escape to – through the pages of a book – than an overseas bookshop? A key feature of The Door-to-Door Bookstore and the titles that follow are their to-be-read lists – which are interspersed throughout, often discussed in conversations between characters. The books themselves might even be seen as portable libraries – or old-fashioned indexes, at least. Annotated bibliographies of what we should read; summaries of what we did, once, but may have forgotten.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop , translated from Japanese by Eric Ozawa this year, was written by Satoshi Yagisawa in 2010. Twenty-year-old Takako quits her job and takes to her bed when her boyfriend announces, out of the blue, he is marrying someone else. Facing the prospect of moving home, she instead moves into the flat above her eccentric uncle’s bookshop.

A proud non-reader, Takako gradually returns to books as her heart heals.

This book rather heavy-handedly makes the case for great literature as a doorway not only into other worlds, but onto other selves. Or back to a true self for damaged salary-workers like Takako who have been swept off course. The shop is repeatedly described as a “safe harbour”. A place to shelter, regather and regroup – for bookseller and buyers alike.

Books about bookshops may be read as “heterotopias”, a concept Michel Foucault uses to describe cultural and discursive spaces that are contradictory or transformative. Worlds within worlds. Parallel spaces such as museums and botanic gardens that mirror the “real” world but are artfully, artificially created curations.

Read more: Explainer: the ideas of Foucault

Bookshops are similarly contradictory: though they may be idealised as places of escape and reading may be romanticised as transformative, both are intrinsically bound up with capitalism. They offer solace, but ultimately exist to sell.

Still, the opposite is true too. Books are commercial products but their content escapes the covers. Like The Neverending Story , the “other” world we read about bleeds into our own. Even if a book is banned or burned, once read it is out in the world.

A love letter and pause for thought

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop is an even more explicit love letter to bookselling. Running a bookshop enables the novel’s main character to get out of the rat race and eventually even find her soulmate.

“I must open a bookshop,” Yeongju says. Throwing herself headlong into this task as a way to change her life, she reinvents her relationship with work. Her story is a blow-by-blow account of her building the business, making conscious choices about employee relations, carving out personal reading time and nurturing a local community in an out-of-the-way neighbourhood.

Given my own early experience in the secondhand and antiquarian trade, along with a short stint at the BooksEtc chain in the UK, it’s hard to argue against the idea of bookselling as an alternate way of making a living.

But it’s not necessarily an alternative one. A bookshop is, after all, a business. One that is battling the behemoth Amazon, as well as an ever-increasing number of entertainment alternatives and ever-diminishing attention spans. Even reluctant booksellers embraced social media and e-commerce during COVID – as Yeongju learns to do.

If bookshops are to survive and thrive, perhaps they do well to “sell” the idea theirs is a different kind of career. A calling.

Robbie Egan, CEO of BookPeople (previously the Australian Booksellers Association), has described bookshops as “third-places”, engaging with their customers in meaningful ways that can’t be reduced to a commercial transaction . It’s about community, he tells me, pointing out how many Australian writers have been – or still are – booksellers, from Kris Kneen to Sean O’Beirne .

Read more: Friday essay: the Melbourne bookshop that ignited Australian modernism

In a note to readers in Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, Bo-Reum reflects on writing her debut novel. She describes how she sat at her desk every day not knowing what to write, until the bookshop appeared. “Everything else fell in place.” This letter perpetuates ideas about writing (immersive, inspirational, enjoyable) that are every bit as romantic as the world of bookselling she describes.

Yet of all these recent books, The Bookseller of Kabul is the one I return to. I cannot forget Seierstad’s imagined account of Aimal, Sultan’s youngest son, in a chapter called The Dreary Room. He is 12 years old and works 12 hours a day, seven days a week “in a little booth in the dark lobby of one of Kabul’s hotels”.

Aimal longs to go to school. He wails that his father, a rich bookseller “passionate about words and history”, has him working in a sweet shop as the best way to learn the family business.

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U.S. book market - statistics & facts

Sales from retail bookstores, the future of the book market, key insights.

Detailed statistics

Revenue of the U.S. book publishing industry 2008-2022

Audiobook industry size in the U.S. 2018-2022

E-books: unit sales in the U.S. 2016-2020

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Book publisher sales revenue in the U.S. 2012-2022, by category

Best-selling print books in the U.S. 2023

Trade book sales revenue in the U.S. 2017-2022, by format

Further recommended statistics

• Premium Statistic Revenue of the U.S. book publishing industry 2008-2022
• Premium Statistic Book publisher sales revenue in the U.S. 2012-2022, by category
• Premium Statistic Trade book sales revenue in the U.S. 2017-2022, by format
• Premium Statistic Revenue of the trade book publishing industry in the U.S. 2013-2022
• Premium Statistic Revenue of the U.S. professional book publishing industry 2013-2022
• Premium Statistic Revenue of the U.S. higher education book publishing industry 2013-2022

Estimated net revenue of the book publishing industry in the United States from 2008 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Book publisher net sales revenue in the United States from 2012 to 2022, by category (in million U.S. dollars)

Trade book sales revenue in the United States from 2017 to 2022, by format (in million U.S. dollars)

Revenue of the trade book publishing industry in the U.S. 2013-2022

Estimated revenue of the trade book publishing industry in the United States from 2013 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of the U.S. professional book publishing industry 2013-2022

Net revenue of the professional book publishing industry in the United States from 2013 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of the U.S. higher education book publishing industry 2013-2022

Net revenue of the higher education book publishing industry in the United States from 2013 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Publishers and bestsellers

• Premium Statistic Estimated expenses of U.S. book publishers 2010-2021
• Basic Statistic Fast-growing indie publishers in the U.S. 2021-2023
• Premium Statistic Best-selling print books in the U.S. 2023
• Premium Statistic Best-selling books in the U.S. 2024
• Premium Statistic Unit sales of frontlist children's books U.S. H1 2023

Estimated expenses of U.S. book publishers 2010-2021

Estimated expenses of U.S. book publishers from 2010 to 2021 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Fast-growing indie publishers in the U.S. 2021-2023

Sales growth of independent book publishers in the United States from 2021 to 2023

Best-selling print books in the United States in 2023, by unit sales (in 1,000s)

Best-selling books in the U.S. 2024

Best-selling books in the United States in the week ending February 10, 2024, by unit sales (in 1,000s)

Unit sales of frontlist children's books U.S. H1 2023

Best-selling frontlist children's books in the United States in 1st half 2023 (in 1,000s)

• Premium Statistic Print book unit sales in the U.S. 2013-2023, by category
• Basic Statistic Book store sales in the U.S. 1992-2023
• Premium Statistic Monthly retail sales of U.S. bookstores 2018-2023
• Premium Statistic Comic publisher: store market share in the U.S. 2023
• Premium Statistic Number of independent bookstores in the U.S. 2009-2023

Print book unit sales in the U.S. 2013-2023, by category

Unit sales of printed books in the United States from 2013 to 2023, by category (in 1,000s)

Book store sales in the U.S. 1992-2023

Book store sales in the United States from 1992 to 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Monthly retail sales of U.S. bookstores 2018-2023

Monthly retail sales of bookstores in the United States from January 2018 to November 2023 (in million U.S. dollars)

Comic publisher: store market share in the U.S. 2023

Distribution of comic store sales in the United States in 4th quarter 2023, by publisher

Number of independent bookstores in the U.S. 2009-2023

Number of independent bookstores in the United States from 2009 to 2023

Consumption

• Premium Statistic U.S. daily time spent reading 2014-2022
• Premium Statistic Average reading time in the U.S. 2018-2022, by age group
• Premium Statistic Average reading time in the U.S. 2018-2022, by ethnicity
• Premium Statistic Book consumption in the U.S. 2011-2021, by format
• Basic Statistic Book readers in the U.S. 2019-2021, by age group

U.S. daily time spent reading 2014-2022

Average daily time spent reading per capita in the United States from 2014 to 2022 (in hours)

Average reading time in the U.S. 2018-2022, by age group

Average daily time spent reading per capita in the United States from 2018 to 2022, by age group (in hours)

Average reading time in the U.S. 2018-2022, by ethnicity

Average daily time spent reading per capita in the United States from 2018 to 2022, by ethnicity (in hours)

Book consumption in the U.S. 2011-2021, by format

Share of adults who have read a book in any format in the last 12 months in the United States from 2011 to 2021, by format

Book readers in the U.S. 2019-2021, by age group

Share of adults who have read a book in any format in the last 12 months in the United States in 2019 and 2021, by age group

Consumer spending

• Premium Statistic U.S. household expenditure on reading 2007-2022
• Premium Statistic U.S. household expenditure on books 2007-2022, by type
• Premium Statistic U.S. household expenditure on digital book readers 2011-2022
• Basic Statistic Recreational books: consumer expenditure in the U.S. 1999-2022
• Basic Statistic Educational books: consumer expenditure in the U.S. 1999-2022
• Premium Statistic Student spending on course material in the U.S. 2007-2023
• Premium Statistic Holiday gifts: what U.S. consumers plan to buy 2023

U.S. household expenditure on reading 2007-2022

Mean annual expenditure on reading per consumer unit in the United States from 2007 to 2022 (in U.S. dollars)

U.S. household expenditure on books 2007-2022, by type

Mean annual expenditure on books per consumer unit in the United States from 2007 to 2022, by type (in U.S. dollars)

U.S. household expenditure on digital book readers 2011-2022

Mean annual expenditure on digital book readers per consumer unit in the United States from 2011 to 2022 (in U.S. dollars)

Recreational books: consumer expenditure in the U.S. 1999-2022

Consumer expenditure on recreational books in the United States from1999 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Educational books: consumer expenditure in the U.S. 1999-2022

Consumer expenditure on educational books in the United States from 1999 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Student spending on course material in the U.S. 2007-2023

Student spending on course material in the United States from the academic years 2007/08 to 2022/23 (in U.S. dollars)

Holiday gifts: what U.S. consumers plan to buy 2023

Holiday gifts to be bought by consumers in the United States in 2023, by category

Further reports

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2021

Featuring joan didion, rachel kushner, hanif abdurraqib, ann patchett, jenny diski, and more.

Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper)

21 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed Read Ann Patchett on creating the work space you need, here

“… excellent … Patchett has a talent for friendship and celebrates many of those friends here. She writes with pure love for her mother, and with humor and some good-natured exasperation at Karl, who is such a great character he warrants a book of his own. Patchett’s account of his feigned offer to buy a woman’s newly adopted baby when she expresses unwarranted doubts is priceless … The days that Patchett refers to are precious indeed, but her writing is anything but. She describes deftly, with a line or a look, and I considered the absence of paragraphs freighted with adjectives to be a mercy. I don’t care about the hue of the sky or the shade of the couch. That’s not writing; it’s decorating. Or hiding. Patchett’s heart, smarts and 40 years of craft create an economy that delivers her perfectly understated stories emotionally whole. Her writing style is most gloriously her own.”

–Alex Witchel ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion (Knopf)

14 Rave • 12 Positive • 6 Mixed Read an excerpt from Let Me Tell You What I Mean here

“In five decades’ worth of essays, reportage and criticism, Didion has documented the charade implicit in how things are, in a first-person, observational style that is not sacrosanct but common-sensical. Seeing as a way of extrapolating hypocrisy, disingenuousness and doubt, she’ll notice the hydrangeas are plastic and mention it once, in passing, sorting the scene. Her gaze, like a sentry on the page, permanently trained on what is being disguised … The essays in Let Me Tell You What I Mean are at once funny and touching, roving and no-nonsense. They are about humiliation and about notions of rightness … Didion’s pen is like a periscope onto the creative mind—and, as this collection demonstrates, it always has been. These essays offer a direct line to what’s in the offing.”

–Durga Chew-Bose ( The New York Times Book Review )

3. Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

12 Rave • 13 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Orwell’s Roses here

“… on its simplest level, a tribute by one fine essayist of the political left to another of an earlier generation. But as with any of Solnit’s books, such a description would be reductive: the great pleasure of reading her is spending time with her mind, its digressions and juxtapositions, its unexpected connections. Only a few contemporary writers have the ability to start almost anywhere and lead the reader on paths that, while apparently meandering, compel unfailingly and feel, by the end, cosmically connected … Somehow, Solnit’s references to Ross Gay, Michael Pollan, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Peter Coyote (to name but a few) feel perfectly at home in the narrative; just as later chapters about an eighteenth-century portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and a visit to the heart of the Colombian rose-growing industry seem inevitable and indispensable … The book provides a captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker … And, movingly, she takes the time to find the traces of Orwell the gardener and lover of beauty in his political novels, and in his insistence on the value and pleasure of things .”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

4. Girlhood by Melissa Febos (Bloomsbury)

16 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Girlhood here

“Every once in a while, a book comes along that feels so definitive, so necessary, that not only do you want to tell everyone to read it now, but you also find yourself wanting to go back in time and tell your younger self that you will one day get to read something that will make your life make sense. Melissa Febos’s fierce nonfiction collection, Girlhood , might just be that book. Febos is one of our most passionate and profound essayists … Girlhood …offers us exquisite, ferocious language for embracing self-pleasure and self-love. It’s a book that women will wish they had when they were younger, and that they’ll rejoice in having now … Febos is a balletic memoirist whose capacious gaze can take in so many seemingly disparate things and unfurl them in a graceful, cohesive way … Intellectual and erotic, engaging and empowering[.]”

–Michelle Hart ( Oprah Daily )

5. Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told by Jenny Diski (Bloomsbury)

14 Rave • 7 Positive

“[Diski’s] reputation as an original, witty and cant-free thinker on the way we live now should be given a significant boost. Her prose is elegant and amused, as if to counter her native melancholia and includes frequent dips into memorable images … Like the ideal artist Henry James conjured up, on whom nothing is lost, Diski notices everything that comes her way … She is discerning about serious topics (madness and death) as well as less fraught material, such as fashion … in truth Diski’s first-person voice is like no other, selectively intimate but not overbearingly egotistic, like, say, Norman Mailer’s. It bears some resemblance to Joan Didion’s, if Didion were less skittish and insistently stylish and generated more warmth. What they have in common is their innate skepticism and the way they ask questions that wouldn’t occur to anyone else … Suffice it to say that our culture, enmeshed as it is in carefully arranged snapshots of real life, needs Jenny Diski, who, by her own admission, ‘never owned a camera, never taken one on holiday.’” It is all but impossible not to warm up to a writer who observes herself so keenly … I, in turn, wish there were more people around who thought like Diski. The world would be a more generous, less shallow and infinitely more intriguing place.”

–Daphne Merkin ( The New York Times Book Review )

6. The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner (Scribner)

12 Rave • 7 Positive Listen to an interview with Rachel Kushner here

“Whether she’s writing about Jeff Koons, prison abolition or a Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem, [Kushner’s] interested in appearances, and in the deeper currents a surface detail might betray … Her writing is magnetised by outlaw sensibility, hard lives lived at a slant, art made in conditions of ferment and unrest, though she rarely serves a platter that isn’t style-mag ready … She makes a pretty convincing case for a political dimension to Jeff Koons’s vacuities and mirrored surfaces, engages repeatedly with the Italian avant garde and writes best of all about an artist friend whose death undoes a spell of nihilism … It’s not just that Kushner is looking back on the distant city of youth; more that she’s the sole survivor of a wild crowd done down by prison, drugs, untimely death … What she remembers is a whole world, but does the act of immortalising it in language also drain it of its power,’neon, in pink, red, and warm white, bleeding into the fog’? She’s mining a rich seam of specificity, her writing charged by the dangers she ran up against. And then there’s the frank pleasure of her sentences, often shorn of definite articles or odd words, so they rev and bucket along … That New Journalism style, live hard and keep your eyes open, has long since given way to the millennial cult of the personal essay, with its performance of pain, its earnest display of wounds received and lessons learned. But Kushner brings it all flooding back. Even if I’m skeptical of its dazzle, I’m glad to taste something this sharp, this smart.”

–Olivia Laing ( The Guardian )

7. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan (FSG)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 5 Mixed • 1 Pan

“[A] quietly dazzling new essay collection … This is, needless to say, fraught terrain, and Srinivasan treads it with determination and skill … These essays are works of both criticism and imagination. Srinivasan refuses to resort to straw men; she will lay out even the most specious argument clearly and carefully, demonstrating its emotional power, even if her ultimate intention is to dismantle it … This, then, is a book that explicitly addresses intersectionality, even if Srinivasan is dissatisfied with the common—and reductive—understanding of the term … Srinivasan has written a compassionate book. She has also written a challenging one … Srinivasan proposes the kind of education enacted in this brilliant, rigorous book. She coaxes our imaginations out of the well-worn grooves of the existing order.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

8. A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)

13 Rave • 4 Positive Listen to an interview with Hanif Abdurraqib here

“[A] wide, deep, and discerning inquest into the Beauty of Blackness as enacted on stages and screens, in unanimity and discord, on public airwaves and in intimate spaces … has brought to pop criticism and cultural history not just a poet’s lyricism and imagery but also a scholar’s rigor, a novelist’s sense of character and place, and a punk-rocker’s impulse to dislodge conventional wisdom from its moorings until something shakes loose and is exposed to audiences too lethargic to think or even react differently … Abdurraqib cherishes this power to enlarge oneself within or beyond real or imagined restrictions … Abdurraqib reminds readers of the massive viewing audience’s shock and awe over seeing one of the world’s biggest pop icons appearing midfield at this least radical of American rituals … Something about the seemingly insatiable hunger Abdurraqib shows for cultural transaction, paradoxical mischief, and Beauty in Blackness tells me he’ll get to such matters soon enough.”

–Gene Seymour ( Bookforum )

9. On Animals by Susan Orlean (Avid Reader Press)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed Listen to an interview with Susan Orlean here

“I very much enjoyed Orlean’s perspective in these original, perceptive, and clever essays showcasing the sometimes strange, sometimes sick, sometimes tender relationships between people and animals … whether Orlean is writing about one couple’s quest to find their lost dog, the lives of working donkeys of the Fez medina in Morocco, or a man who rescues lions (and happily allows even full grown males to gently chew his head), her pages are crammed with quirky characters, telling details, and flabbergasting facts … Readers will find these pages full of astonishments … Orlean excels as a reporter…Such thorough reporting made me long for updates on some of these stories … But even this criticism only testifies to the delight of each of the urbane and vivid stories in this collection. Even though Orlean claims the animals she writes about remain enigmas, she makes us care about their fates. Readers will continue to think about these dogs and donkeys, tigers and lions, chickens and pigeons long after we close the book’s covers. I hope most of them are still well.”

–Sy Montgomery ( The Boston Globe )

10. Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South  by Margaret Renkl (Milkweed Editions)

9 Rave • 5 Positive Read Margaret Renkl on finding ideas everywhere, here

“Renkl’s sense of joyful belonging to the South, a region too often dismissed on both coasts in crude stereotypes and bad jokes, co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported … Renkl at her most tender and most fierce … Renkl’s gift, just as it was in her first book Late Migrations , is to make fascinating for others what is closest to her heart … Any initial sense of emotional whiplash faded as as I proceeded across the six sections and realized that the book is largely organized around one concept, that of fair and loving treatment for all—regardless of race, class, sex, gender or species … What rises in me after reading her essays is Lewis’ famous urging to get in good trouble to make the world fairer and better. Many people in the South are doing just that—and through her beautiful writing, Renkl is among them.”

–Barbara J. King ( NPR )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The New York Times Best Sellers - May 19, 2024

Authoritatively ranked lists of books sold in the united states, sorted by format and genre..

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only.

• Combined Print & E-Book Fiction

New this week

KING OF SLOTH

by Ana Huang

The fourth book in the Kings of Sin series. A tragedy forces a billionaire heir and his publicist to confront their feelings for each other.

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

2 weeks on the list

FUNNY STORY

by Emily Henry

After their exes run off together, Daphne and Miles form a friendship and concoct a plan involving misleading photos.

13 weeks on the list

by Kristin Hannah

In 1965, a nursing student follows her brother to serve during the Vietnam War and returns to a divided America.

4 weeks on the list

A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES

by Sarah J. Maas

After killing a wolf in the woods, Feyre is taken from her home and placed inside the world of the Fae.

ONLY THE BRAVE

by Danielle Steel

In World War II Germany, Sophia Alexander joins the resistance and faces several kinds of loss of family members.

• Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction

THE DEMON OF UNREST

by Erik Larson

The author of “The Splendid and the Vile” portrays the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.

6 weeks on the list

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

by Jonathan Haidt

A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health impacts that a phone-based life has on children.

UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH A JEW

by Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby

A wide-ranging examination of Judaism and antisemitism in America today.

3 weeks on the list

AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

A trove of items collected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s late husband inspired an appraisal of central figures and pivotal moments of the 1960s.

FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY

by Tulsi Gabbard

The Army Reserve officer, former member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate explains why she left the Democratic Party.

• Hardcover Fiction

HOME IS WHERE THE BODIES ARE

by Jeneva Rose

Three estranged siblings find evidence of a dark secret involving their absent father and recently deceased mother.

52 weeks on the list

FOURTH WING

by Rebecca Yarros

Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

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• Hardcover Nonfiction
• Paperback Trade Fiction

A COURT OF MIST AND FURY

The second book in the Court of Thorns and Roses series. Feyre gains the powers of the High Fae and a greater evil emerges.

9 weeks on the list

HAPPY PLACE

A former couple pretend to be together for the sake of their friends during their annual getaway in Maine.

5 weeks on the list

JUST FOR THE SUMMER

by Abby Jimenez

Justin and Emma, whose exes find soulmates after breaking up with them, have a fling on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.

• Paperback Nonfiction

289 weeks on the list

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE

by Bessel van der Kolk

How trauma affects the body and mind, and innovative treatments for recovery.

THE LIGHT WE CARRY

by Michelle Obama

The former first lady shares personal stories and the tools she uses to deal with difficult situations.

166 weeks on the list

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

by David Grann

The story of a murder spree in 1920s Oklahoma that targeted Osage Indians, whose lands contained oil. The fledgling F.B.I. intervened, ineffectively.

31 weeks on the list

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR ON PALESTINE

by Rashid Khalidi

An account of the history of settler colonialism and resistance, based on untapped archival materials and reports.

212 weeks on the list

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.

• Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous

THE NEW MENOPAUSE

by Mary Claire Haver

ADHD IS AWESOME

by Penn Holderness and Kim Holderness

232 weeks on the list

ATOMIC HABITS

by James Clear

POWER MOVES

by Sarah Jakes Roberts

THE ALGEBRA OF WEALTH

by Scott Galloway

• Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover

441 weeks on the list

by R.J. Palacio

A boy with a facial deformity starts school. (Ages 8 to 12)

197 weeks on the list

THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR YOUNG CHEFS

by America's Test Kitchen Kids

Over 100 kid-tested recipes from America's Test Kitchen. (Ages 8 and up)

by Alan Gratz

The friends Frank and Stanley give a vivid account of the Pearl Harbor attack. (Ages 8 to 12)

8 weeks on the list

by Kate DiCamillo

During the summer before fifth grade, 10 year-old Ferris contends with friends’ and family’s bouts with love. (Ages 8 to 12)

53 weeks on the list

THE SUN AND THE STAR

by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro

The demigods Will and Nico embark on a dangerous journey to the Underworld to rescue an old friend. (Ages 10 to 14)

• Children’s Picture Books

51 weeks on the list

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH AN IDEA?

by Kobi Yamada. Illustrated by Mae Besom

Giving a new idea the room to grow. (Ages 5 to 8)

WHY A SON NEEDS A MOM

by Gregory E. Lang. Illustrated by Gail Yerrill

The special bond between mother and son. (Ages 4 to 7)

WHY A DAUGHTER NEEDS A MOM

by Gregory E. Lang. Illustrated by Sydney Hanson

The special bond between mother and daughter. (Ages 4 to 8)

18 weeks on the list

BECAUSE I HAD A TEACHER

by Kobi Yamada. Illustrated by Natalie Russell

An ode to teachers. (Ages 4 to 7)

20 weeks on the list

I LOVE MOM WITH THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

by Eric Carle

That ravenous insect is brimming with motherly love. (Ages 3 to 5)

• Children’s & Young Adult Series

790 weeks on the list

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney

The travails and challenges of adolescence. (Ages 9 to 12)

136 weeks on the list

A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER

by Holly Jackson

Pippa Fitz-Amobi solves murderous crimes. (Ages 14 and up)

723 weeks on the list

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS

by Rick Riordan

A boy battles mythological monsters. (Ages 9 to 12)

153 weeks on the list

WHO WAS/IS . . . ?

by Jim Gigliotti and others; various illustrators

Biographies unlock legendary lives. (Ages 8 to 11)

17 weeks on the list

THE WILD ROBOT

by Peter Brown

Roz the robot adapts to her surroundings on a remote, wild island. (Ages 7 to 12)

• Young Adult Hardcover

by Lauren Roberts

Adena is on her own in Loot, after Paedyn is selected for the Purging Trials. (Ages 14 and up)

26 weeks on the list

Forbidden love is in the air when Paedyn, an Ordinary, and Kai, an Elite, become romantically involved. (Ages 14 and up)

THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE

Annabel Price's mother was presumed dead, until she reappears during the filming of a documentary about her disappearance. (Ages 14 to 17)

46 weeks on the list

DIVINE RIVALS

by Rebecca Ross

Two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection. (Ages 13 to 18)

19 weeks on the list

RUTHLESS VOWS

In the sequel to "Divine Rivals," Roman and Iris will risk their hearts and futures to change the tides of the war. (Ages 13 to 18)

Weekly Best Sellers Lists

Monthly best sellers lists.

The bar chart shows information about fiction book sales from 2006 to 2010

The bar chart shows information about fiction book sales from 2006 to 2010.

The bar chart illustrates the sales of fiction books in five different types, namely young adult, classics, mystery, romance, sci-Fi and fantasy between 2006 and 2010

Overall, romance was the best-seller over the period shown, while the revenue of science-fiction and fantasy was the lowest

In 2006, the number of mystery books sold around 60 thousand dollars, compared to over 80 thousand dollars of romance books. The revenue of these two types peaked in 2007, around 80 thousand dollars from mystery and nearly 120 thousand dollars from romance. In 2008, both mystery and romance books sales fell dramatically to 55 thousand dollars and 65 thousand dollars respectively, but gradually increased in the next two years

The other three types of books were sold under 40 thousand dollars in four years. Both young adult and classics types were sold about 30 thousand dollars in 2007, whereas sci-fi and fantasy sales was 20 thousand dollars. In 2009, revenue of young adult and classics books was similar, approximately 25 thousand dollars, in contrast, the number of sci-fi and fantasy books sold was the lowest.

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Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors: Line 7, column 394, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace Suggestion: ... and fantasy books sold was the lowest. ^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used: but, if, so, whereas, while, in contrast

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech: To be verbs : 7.0 7.0 100% => OK Auxiliary verbs: 0.0 1.00243902439 0% => OK Conjunction : 11.0 6.8 162% => OK Relative clauses : 0.0 3.15609756098 0% => OK Pronoun: 1.0 5.60731707317 18% => OK Preposition: 28.0 33.7804878049 83% => OK Nominalization: 7.0 3.97073170732 176% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words: No of characters: 948.0 965.302439024 98% => OK No of words: 181.0 196.424390244 92% => More content wanted. Chars per words: 5.23756906077 4.92477711251 106% => OK Fourth root words length: 3.66791821706 3.73543355544 98% => OK Word Length SD: 2.49305374847 2.65546596893 94% => OK Unique words: 89.0 106.607317073 83% => More unique words wanted. Unique words percentage: 0.491712707182 0.547539520022 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted. syllable_count: 261.0 283.868780488 92% => OK avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.45097560976 96% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by: Pronoun: 0.0 1.53170731707 0% => OK Article: 5.0 4.33902439024 115% => OK Subordination: 1.0 1.07073170732 93% => OK Conjunction: 1.0 0.482926829268 207% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning. Preposition: 5.0 3.36585365854 149% => OK

Performance on sentences: How many sentences: 5.0 8.94146341463 56% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long. Sentence length: 36.0 22.4926829268 160% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long. Sentence length SD: 108.108464053 43.030603864 251% => The lengths of sentences changed so frequently. Chars per sentence: 189.6 112.824112599 168% => OK Words per sentence: 36.2 22.9334400587 158% => OK Discourse Markers: 8.0 5.23603664747 153% => OK Paragraphs: 4.0 3.83414634146 104% => OK Language errors: 1.0 1.69756097561 59% => OK Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 3.70975609756 81% => OK Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 1.13902439024 88% => OK Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.09268292683 24% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted. What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion: Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.186003379066 0.215688989381 86% => OK Sentence topic coherence: 0.102071729732 0.103423049105 99% => OK Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0678904633424 0.0843802449381 80% => OK Paragraph topic coherence: 0.130641793369 0.15604864568 84% => OK Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.104472481664 0.0819641961636 127% => OK

Essay readability: automated_readability_index: 21.4 13.2329268293 162% => OK flesch_reading_ease: 51.86 61.2550243902 85% => OK smog_index: 8.8 6.51609756098 135% => OK flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 10.3012195122 146% => OK coleman_liau_index: 13.7 11.4140731707 120% => OK dale_chall_readability_score: 8.74 8.06136585366 108% => OK difficult_words: 38.0 40.7170731707 93% => OK linsear_write_formula: 18.0 11.4329268293 157% => OK gunning_fog: 16.4 10.9970731707 149% => OK text_standard: 9.0 11.0658536585 81% => OK What are above readability scores?

--------------------- Rates: 56.1797752809 out of 100 Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 9 --------------------- Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.

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Our writers have familiarity with a wide range of readings. However, if they have not read the book you have in mind, they may be able to find it, and you will also have the opportunity to provide it to your matched writer. One way or the other, we’ll make it work.

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Previous book reports by Ultius writers

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1 Book reports are not book reviews

Good book reports are more of an analysis than a review

Professional book reports take a detailed and methodical approach. They aren’t meant to prove you read the book, or merely provide a review of the subject.

Book reviews and book reports are two different projects entirely. A book review considers the book from an objective stance, incorporates themes from the book, reviews the interest level, and is often written in first-person.

Book reports examine the five main elements of the author’s work. Most reports are 250-500-word informative essays that discuss the work objectively.

No opinions or review subject is used unless your instructions require an opinionated response.

Whether your book report is about a piece of fiction or nonfiction, you will need to focus on the book’s plot, characters, setting, and main idea while adding a thesis or evaluation of your own.

2 Prevent spoiler alerts by focusing on two or three major events

The plot of a book is the focal point for the character’s actions. It guides the readers in understanding the book’s flow. Fiction and nonfiction plots always seem to revolve around some sort of major conflict or problem.

Perhaps the main character is stuck on a deserted island and fighting to survive. Or, maybe the they are struggling with fulfilling their family’s expectations rather than follow their own dreams and aspirations.

The plot is the meat of the story. Ask yourself, “What is this story about?” This will help you explain it to your audience.

3 Explain the character’s personalities and explain who they are

The characters are the “who” of the story. Authors utilize several character types , but most of them come under the category of main characters, supporting characters, and periphery characters. In a book report, keep your focus on the main, and supporting characters.

Use detail to make the characters come to life. Describe them and their relationships to one another. If the book is nonfiction like a biography or auto-biography, focus on the author or who thee biography is about.

Analyze the characters personalities, their appearance, how different characters know one another and interact, and how past events influence their actions.

You can also discuss what similarities they may have to characters from other books or movies. Connecting the characters to events in your life is a great technique to connect them to the real world. Just remember to remain objective and use third-person whenever possible.

4 Explain why the author wrote the book, and what reaction they expect

The main idea is the “why” of the story. Determine what the author wants to accomplish, how he wants to impact the reader’s life, and why he wrote the book in the first place.

Most authors want to convey a message rather than entertain the audience. All works of fiction and nonfiction have a main idea and reason the author wrote the story.

Questions to consider about the main idea

• What is the point of this story?
• Why did the author write it?
• Are they trying to express a specific point, or address a specific issue?

Answers to questions like these are what people look for in a book report.

This may require you to do some outside research. Visit the author’s website and see if they have a summary of the book and author discussion. Look for newspapers and magazines to see if the author spoke with a journalist about the book and why they wrote it.

5 Use action verbs and detailed descriptions to bring the book’s setting to life

The setting of a book is the “where.” Describe where the book takes place, the time of year, the point in history, and the physical location.

Use active voice and action verbs to make the setting believable. Compare the setting to real-life locations and events. You don’t have to go into too much detail here. Just give the audience some context.

6 Explain the purpose of the book and how the author told the story using third-person and objective language

The thesis statement evaluates “how” the story was told. This is not just your opinion, but an evaluation of the work from your perspective.

Focus on whether the book was well-written and easy to follow. Consider if your you would recommend it to others.

Rate the book on a scale of one to ten, and tell the reader why you scored the material in that fashion. Explain how the author could have improved the book.

It would be wise to back up your thesis with examples from the text and/or outside research you have obtained from reputable sources. Just remember to cite any work or original though that is not yours.

Writing a great book report

A great book report always contains some appreciation for the literary work being reported on

If you are writing a book report on The Great Gatsby , it is thus imperative that after you address your thesis and craft an introductory paragraph you acknowledge what you personally liked about the book as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald ’s craft. Doing so will not only help your reader understand if you have any bias towards your topic, but also give your project a voice.

Step 1: Reread the book several times and seek outside opinions

Read the book at least twice to gain an intimate knowledge of the content

Every book report starts at the beginning by reading the book. Writers shouldn’t stop at reading it once. Your book report should be roughly 75% summing the book up, and the other 25% is an evaluation of what you read.

Enjoy the book the first time you read it. Don’t take notes or try to analyze the content. Read the book as a reader would. This will give you an insight into whether the book is any good and worth reporting.

Your second reading should be done with a notepad and highlighter. Make notes about certain subjects and characters. Jot down questions you have. Highlight areas you want to come back to for later review.

Use your notes and questions to conduct outside research. Read reviews and other writings about the book. Look for explanations to explain the author’s claims, plot, and intentions.

Step 2: Format your book report into three main sections

Use the three-part essay technique to divide the book report into a manageable format

Your main purpose should be to inform your reader about the book author’s original intention and explain what the book is about. Audiences won't understand the content if it's thrown together using a confusing structure .

Divide your report into three main sections.

• The introduction should start with a summary and thesis statement.
• Gradually move on to the main content and supporting evidence.
• Conclude the book report with a summary of your claim and call-to-action.

Step 3: The book report’s intention should be stated in your introduction

The introduction should tell readers what your book report will cover

The introduction is the first paragraph of your book report. It includes vital information about the book such as its author, publisher, date of publication, title, and genre.

Make your intention clear. Like a standard essay, make your intentions clear in your introduction, and then state it again in your conclusion.

Be sure to italicize the titles of longer works and use quotation marks for shorter works. You may want to start your introduction with a quotation, a controversial question, or an anecdote to grab the reader’s attention. For now, focus on summarizing the book.

Step 4: The body fleshes out your thesis with evidence from the book

Use the body to explain the book and your evaluation of it in more detail

The body should be between three and five paragraphs each containing approximately five to seven sentences. Use each paragraph to detail a key element in the book.

Be sure to provide an in-depth analysis of how the setting adds to the content, character development, whether the plot is realistic or not, and how main idea of the book impacts the readers.

While the type and amount of information may be dictated in your requirements, there are always elements you should never include in the book report. The two key points to remember is this is not a regurgitation of the book or place to express your personal feelings.

Remember that while you do need to evaluate what you read, this is a book report, not a book review. Book reviews provide subjective opinions while book reports provide an objective evaluation.

The amount of detail you go into depends on the length of the book report, and you may need to write one paragraph for each of these parts or fuse the information together into one paragraph.

Textual evidence, such as summary, paraphrase, specific details, and direct quotations, are all vital components of book reports. Don’t forget to cite all quotes and outside sources .

Step 5: Include a call-to-action and rating of the book in your conclusion

Use your conclusion to sum up and conclude your book report

This is where you will evaluate the book. Here is where your opinion comes in swinging Be strong and firm in your evaluation and opinion. Let the audience know why they should bother reading this book.

Perhaps speak about how successful the author was or how they could have improved their story. Include a call-to-action designed to get your audience to read the book. Give the book a rating based on your impressions. Always remain objective and fair.

Step 6: Edit your book report for errors and inconsistencies

Use an editor to make your book report appear more professional

The final stage of any writing project is to proofread and edit your paper.

Even the best writers make careless mistakes. This is why all expert writers have good editors to back them up.

Until you reach professional status or have the money to hire an expert to edit your work , you’ll have to be your own editor.

Take steps to learn advanced grammar and spelling, and familiarize yourself with common style guides.

Step 7: Cite all outside sources and avoid plagiarism

Use a professional style such as MLA or APA to prevent plagiarism and give credit to the creator of your sources

Most book reports are written in MLA format, but APA also is commonly used. The works cited page should be on a separate page.

Be sure to include the piece of literature you are writing about as well as any outside sources you have used in your book report.

Proper citation formats

MLA Author Last, First. Title. Publisher, Year.

APA Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title: Subtitle. Location: Publisher.

You also have to incorporate citations in your main text. MLA and APA have specific guidelines for in-paragraph citations. Review these style guides before writing your book reports.

The Purdue OWL writing lab provides writers with style guides, formatting instructions, and paper writing help.

• MLA - https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
• APA - https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_style_introduction.html

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Read this week's magazine

Amazon Launches Massive Six-Day Book Sale

Amazon is launching a new six-day shopping event, Amazon Book Sale , which will run from May 15–20 this year and feature deep discounts on thousands of books. The sale, touted by the company as "The Book Sale of Your Dreams," includes up to 50% off print bestsellers, up to 60% off overstock books, and up to 80% off Kindle Books.

In addition to books, the sale is being used to market such other book-related items as Kindle Scribe, Amazon's new e-book reader/notetaker. And unlike Amazon's hugely popular Prime Day, the Amazon Book Sale is open to all Amazon customers, not just Amazon Prime members. (The Amazon Book Sale site does, however, include a link for shoppers to learn more about Prime Day.)

To promote the event, starting today, Amazon will offer early deals including three months of Kindle Unlimited for free, as well as:

• Up to 80% off Kindle editions of titles recommended by the Amazon Books Editors
• Up to 75% off select titles by such BookTok favorite authors as Alexis Hall, Sarah J. Maas, and Rebecca Serles
• Up to 70% Kindle editions of select celebrity memoirs, such as Viola Davis's Finding Me and Molly Shannon's Hello Molly!
• Up to 60% Kindle editions of "popular book club picks," such as The Christie Affair and Good Company
• Up to 50% off popular book-to-screen titles, such as American Prometheus , The Lord of the Rings , and Red, White & Royal Blue
• Up to 40% off select classics, such as Pride and Prejudice and The Republic
• Up to 40% on children's graphic novels, such as Serena Blasco's Enola Holmes and Mariah Marsden's The Secret Garden
• 29% off select Kindle Scribe devices

The sale is the latest books-related initiative from Amazon, the e-tail giant whose business focus has expanded well beyond the bookselling space in which it cut its teeth as a fledgling e-tailer. In December 2023, the retail giant launched its Your Books feature, which tracks all of customers' print, Kindle, and Audible book purchases; generates recommendations based on their reading activity; and provides "insights" into reading habits. Doubling down on algorithmic recommendations, earlier this month, the Amazon-owned Audible launched a new feature that recommends audiobook titles based on users' Prime Video viewing activity. A representative of Amazon told PW that it "will not speculate" on whether the e-tailer may make the new book sale an annual affair.

The launch of Amazon Book Sale is sure to draw the attention of all segments of the industry, and perhaps especially the bookselling side. The American Booksellers Association is seeking to add book retailers to the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust complaint against Amazon, which currently does not address what Amazon's practices have done to book retailing in general and to independent bookstores in particular. In announcing the ABA's motion to intervene with the FTC lawsuit, ABA CEO Allison Hill noted that, since Amazon's launch in 1994, the number of indie bookstores in the U.S. has declined by around 64%—from 7,000 to 2,500.

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Urban Book Publishers: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

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The Writer’s Journey: Where To Publish Personal Essays

Table of Contents:

1. what is a personal essay , 2. key features of personal essays:, authenticity: , individual perspective: , emotional connection: , 3. how to write a personal essay, choosing a topic: , organizing your thoughts: , adding details: , being honest: , 4. where can you publish personal essays, online literary magazines: , writing communities and blogs: , newspaper and magazine op-ed sections: , literary anthologies and essay collections: , online writing contests: , specialized niche websites: , 5. guidelines for submission:, 6. reading submission guidelines:, word count: , formatting requirements: , theme or topic preferences: , submission method: , rights and originality: , 7. craft an engaging title and introduction:, 8. polishing your essay:, proofreading: , clarity and coherence: , conciseness: , 9. originality and avoiding plagiarism:, 10. adhering to ethics and sensitivity:, 11. submission process and follow-up:, key concepts and profound details, conclusion:.

Just Press Play To Hear The Piece.

While no one can deny the power of personal essays, there are many reasons why you might be looking for a place to publish your own. You may have been asked to submit an essay to a contest or publication and want to know if it meets their standards, or maybe you’re just hoping to get some feedback on your latest writing project.

Whatever your reason is for Essay Publishing, book publishers New York  got you covered! Keep reading for information on where to publish personal essays and what they look like.

Personal essays are a great way for individuals to express their thoughts, experiences, and opinions on a personal topic. Whether a lighthearted tale or a heartfelt reflection, these essays give readers a glimpse into the writer’s mind and emotions.

To ensure that your essay is impactful and engaging, it can be beneficial to seek professional assistance. Ghostwriting services can help you bring your ideas to life and create a well-crafted essay that resonates with your readers. These services enable you to collaborate with an experienced writer who can transform your thoughts into clear and engaging prose.

Moreover, proofreading services can play a crucial role in enhancing the quality of your essay. These services involve meticulously reviewing your essay to identify and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Additionally, professional proofreaders can offer valuable feedback on the overall clarity, structure, and coherence of your writing.

It’s important to find your unique voice and share your personal experiences with the reader when it comes to personal essays. However, don’t underestimate professional assistance’s impact on the final result. 

When writing a personal essay, make sure that the following key features are included in it

Personal essays are all about being true to yourself. You can be honest and authentic, sharing your genuine feelings and experiences.

Each personal essay is unique because it comes from your viewpoint. It’s your chance to share what matters and how you see the world.

These essays often aim to connect with readers emotionally. Whether it’s joy, sadness, excitement, or contemplation, personal essays can evoke various emotions in readers.

By understanding and emphasizing the key features of personal essays, writers can craft compelling pitches to attract publishers’ attention. Pitching to publishers opens doors for personal essays to be published, shared, and appreciated by a wider readership, creating opportunities for meaningful connections and impact.

For Essay Publishing, you first need to know how to write it. Here is how you can write a personal essay in a few steps:

Select a topic, akin to finding a book title by its plot, that is meaningful to you…

. It could be a personal story, an idea, or an experience you want to share. 

Plan how you want to present your story. Consider the beginning, middle, and end of your essay. You also need to plan on formatting for publishing according to the requirements of where you want to publish. When you think through all of this, the process of writing an essay further can be easy.

Use descriptive language, as detailed in how a writer can edit a narrative , to paint a vivid picture for your readers. Include sensory details to make your essay more engaging.

Be true to yourself. Don’t be afraid to share your true feelings and experiences, even if they might feel vulnerable.

When it comes to sharing your work with the world, finding the right platform is crucial. Here are various places where you can consider sharing your stories:

These websites are like treasure troves of interesting content. Places such as “The Sun Magazine,” “Tin House,” and “Narratively” love personal essays. 

They’re on the lookout for captivating stories that touch the hearts of their readers. These platforms aim to collect different perspectives and thoughts, making them perfect for your essays.

Websites like “Medium” and “WordPress” offer spaces for writers for Essay Publishing. They provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your work to a broad audience. 

Additionally, Medium has a Partner Program that could reward you based on how much people enjoy reading your essays.

Consider sharing your essays with the opinion sections of well-known newspapers like “The New York Times,” “The Guardian,” or “The Washington Post.”

These places have lots of readers and discussions. Contributing here allows you to be part of important conversations happening in society.

Some organizations create collections of essays on particular themes. Submitting your work to these collections can get your essays published in print or online, giving you exposure to a wider audience.

Writing contests hosted by websites like “Writer’s Digest”  and “The Writer Magazine” are great avenues for getting your essays noticed. 

These contests often have different themes and offer prizes, making them an exciting way to share your stories.

Depending on the topic of your essay, there are websites dedicated to specific interests. Whether about travel, parenting, mental health, or lifestyle, these platforms cater to diverse topics, providing a perfect space for your unique stories.

Submitting your essays to different platforms requires attention to specific publishing contracts , guides and practices. Here’s a comprehensive breakdown to help you ace the submission process:

Before submitting, carefully read and understand the submission guidelines and publisher-author relations of the platform you’re interested in. 

Each platform has its own set of rules, preferences, and expectations for submissions. Pay close attention to details such as:

Ensure your essay meets the specified word count requirements. Some platforms might have a specific range they prefer.

Check for specific formatting guidelines, such as font size, spacing, or file format (e.g., .docx, .pdf).

Some platforms might have themes or topics they’re particularly interested in. Align your essay’s subject matter accordingly.

Note whether submissions are accepted via email, online forms, or submission portals. Follow the specified submission procedure.

Understand the platform’s policies regarding ownership of the content. Ensure your essay is original and not previously published elsewhere.

Capturing the attention of editors or readers starts with an enticing title and introduction. Craft a title, similar to how you’d write a thank you note , that reflects the essence of your essay and compels the reader to delve deeper. 

Your introduction should be engaging, drawing in the audience and setting the tone for the rest of the essay.

Editing and revising your essay are crucial steps before submission. Ensure your writing is clear, concise, and error-free. Here are some tips:

Check for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation issues. Consider using grammar-checking tools or seeking assistance from a trusted proofreader.

Ensure your ideas flow logically and are presented coherently. Avoid overly complex sentences or jargon that might hinder readability.

Eliminate unnecessary details or repetitive information. Keep your essay focused on its central theme or message.

Maintain the authenticity of your work by ensuring it is entirely original. Avoid plagiarism by attributing sources correctly if using external references or quotes. Plagiarism can severely impact the credibility of your submission.

Be mindful of sensitive topics or personal information shared in your essay. Respect the privacy of the individuals mentioned and adhere to ethical considerations. Ensure your content does not harm or offend any particular group or individual.

Follow the platform’s submission instructions meticulously. Submit your essay within the specified timeframe, if provided. After submission, be patient. Responses may take time. If allowed, follow up politely if you haven’t received a response within the expected timeframe.

The world of personal essays offers a myriad of opportunities for aspiring writers. From online journals to renowned newspapers, the options are vast. Selecting the right platform involves understanding your essay’s theme, audience, and aspirations as a writer. 

Authenticity, clarity, and adherence to submission guidelines are paramount for Essay Publishing. Lastly, embracing your unique voice makes your essays resonate with readers across the globe.

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This list has been updated for May 14th: all the deals are still active, and more have been added!

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Amazon's Book Sale offers huge savings on popular titles: Details on the 6-day event

What to expect from the first-of-its-kind sales event.

Get ready, book enthusiasts! Amazon is hosting a brand new six-day Amazon Book Sale event, offering readers across the U.S. an opportunity to stock up on their favorite reads at incredible prices.

The Amazon Book Sale runs from May 15 to May 20, but savvy shoppers can access early deals starting today.

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• A Wide Range of Genres: Whether you're into mysteries, romance, sci-fi, biographies, or non-fiction, you'll find deals across a diverse selection of genres. Popular print titles will be slashed by up to 50%, while Kindle Books could be available at a whopping 80% discount.
• Extra Value Opportunities: Discover even more savings through Amazon's subscription reading services like Kindle Unlimited or Audible. Kindle Unlimited offers unlimited reading for a monthly fee, and Audible boasts a vast collection of audiobooks for those who prefer listening to their stories.
• No Membership Requirements: Unlike other Amazon events, this sale doesn't require a Prime membership to unlock the savings. However, Prime members can still benefit from their regular perks, such as Prime Reading, which offers a rotating selection of thousands of titles, including audiobooks, comics, and magazines.

Keep reading to shop incredible books on sale now.

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Introducing the Amazon Book Sale—a new shopping event with deals on thousands of books, starting May 15

Can I see all of my Amazon books in one place? Yes—introducing Your Books.

Your Books is a personalized space to explore all of your print, Kindle, and Audible books, receive recommendations, and gain insights into your reading habits.

What is Amazon Book Sale?

When is amazon book sale.

What are some of the best early deals and offers?

• Save 29%—Amazon’s lowest price—on select Kindle Scribe devices
• Save up to 80% on curated recommendations made by the Amazon Books Editors , including Kindle Books like Memphis , The Last Bookshop in London , Now Is Not the Time to Panic , Happy-Go-Lucky , Broken (in the best possible way) , and The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
• Save on popular books trending on #BookTok , including 75% on Alexis Hall’s A Lady for a Duke , 70% on the Sarah J. Maas Starter Bundle: A Court of Thorns and Roses , House of Earth and Blood , and Throne of Glass (available May 13; Kindle Book only), and 57% on Rebecca Serle’s Expiration Dates

Anthony Bourdain’s

• Save up to 60% on popular book club picks , including The Christie Affair (Reese's Book Club; Kindle Book only) , Middlesex (Oprah’s Book Club), and Good Company (Read with Jenna; Kindle Book only)
• Save up to 50% on popular book-to-screen titles , including American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER , The Lord of the Rings , Firefly Lane , Red, White & Royal Blue, The Last Kingdom , and The Princess Bride (available May 12)
• Save up to 40% on classics like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (available May 12) and Plato’s The Republic (available May 12)
• Save up to 40% on popular children’s graphic novels , including Serena Blasco’s Enola Holmes: The Graphic Novels and Mariah Marsden’s The Secret Garden: A Graphic Novel
• Get three months of Kindle Unlimited for $0.00
• Choose any May First Reads , free with Prime or only $1.99 for a limited time, and get a $2 credit toward a select Kindle book
• Discover the latest Kindle Challenge mystery reveal and unlock a new achievement in the Kindle app when they read any three days between May 14 and May 20

All the best new books available to Kindle Unlimited members

Explore the latest releases and enjoy popular books and authors right now with Kindle Unlimited, our binge-worthy literary subscription service that offers unlimited reading and listening.

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E. B. White is one of the most famous children’s book authors. But he should be better known for his essays.

I was well into adulthood before I realized the co-author of my battered copy of The Elements of Style was also the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web . That’s right, the White of the revered style manual that everyone knew as “Strunk and White” also wrote children’s books…as well as some of the best essays in the English language.

If you’re of a certain age, you might well remember E. B. White’s pointers in The Elements of Style :

Place yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs; do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.

That’s some good advice, much better than the terrible counsel offered on Page 76: “Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute.” Thanks, E. B., I do what I want. ☹️

Born in 1899 in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Elwyn Brooks White attended Cornell University, where he earned the nickname “Andy.” (Weird historical fact: If your last name was White, you were automatically an Andy at Cornell, in honor of the school’s co-founder, Andrew Dickson White. There is no connection to fellow Cornell alum Andy Bernard .) After graduation, White worked as a journalist and an advertising copywriter for several years. He published his first article in The New Yorker the year it was founded, 1925.

White became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1927, but was an early enthusiast of the work-from-home movement, initially refusing to come to the office and eventually agreeing to come in only on Thursdays. In those days, he shared a small office (“a sort of elongated closet,” he called it) with James Thurber.

His famous officemate later recalled that White had an odd a brilliant habit: When visitors were announced, he would climb out the office window and scamper down the fire escape. “He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club,” Thurber later remembered of the chronically shy author. “His life is his own.”

In 1929, White and Thurber co-authored their first book, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do . (Don’t worry: It was comic essays.) That same year, White married Katharine Angell, The New Yorker’s fiction editor from its inaugural year until 1960. She was the mother of Roger Angell , the famed essayist and baseball writer who himself became a fiction editor at The New Yorker in the 1950s.

In 1938, White and Katharine moved permanently to a farm in Maine they had purchased five years before. If you’re wondering about the inspiration for 1952’s Charlotte’s Web , look no further than White’s 1948 essay for The Atlantic, “ Death of a Pig .” (He bought the pig with the intention of fattening it for slaughter; instead, he later nursed it through a fatal illness and buried it on the farm.)

Stuart Little had been published seven years before Charlotte’s Web . Along with 1970’s The Trumpet of the Swan , these books have made White one of the nation’s best-known children’s authors. I’m sure White didn’t mind, but by all rights, he should be better known for his essays. He authored over 20 collections of such classics as “Once More to the Lake,” “The Sea and The Wind That Blow,” “The Ring of Time,” “A Slight Sound at Evening” and “Farewell, My Lovely!” Endlessly anthologized, many are also taught in writing workshops to this day.

In 1949, White published Here Is New York , a short book developed from an essay about the pros and cons of living in New York City. In a 2012 essay for America , literary editor Raymond Schroth, S.J., noted White’s juxtaposition in Here Is New York of technological terrors like nuclear bombers (the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949) with the simple beauties of nature:

Grand Central Terminal has become honky tonk, the great mansions are in decline, and there is generally more tension, irritability and great speed. The subtlest change is that the city is now destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a flock of geese could end this island fantasy, burn the towers and crumble the bridges. But the United Nations will make this the capital of the world. The perfect target may become the perfect “demonstration of nonviolence and racial brotherhood.” A block away in an interior garden was an old willow tree. This tree, symbol of the city, White said, must survive.

“It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it,” White wrote in Here Is New York . “In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: ‘This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree.’”

The tree lasted for another six decades —two more than the Cold War, in fact—before finally being chopped down in 2009.

In a 1954 review of books by White and James Michener, America literary editor Harold C. Gardiner, S.J. , said White “has one of the most distinctive styles discernible on the American literary scene.” Since even the most cursory review of Father Gardiner’s many years of commentary shows he hated almost everything, it was quite a compliment. (Later in the review, he noted that “Mr. Michener, who has done better in his other books, comes a cropper here mainly because his style is wooden, sententious and dull.”)

In 1963, White received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his writings. Fifteen years later, he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for “his letters, essays, and the full body of his work.” In 2005, the composer Nico Muhly debuted a song cycle based on The Elements of Style at the New York Public Library. Among its signature moments was a tenor offering more of White’s good advice, this time in song:

Do not use a hyphen between words that can be better written as one word .

White died in 1985 at his farm in Maine. His wife Katharine had died eight years earlier. His obituary in The New York Times quoted William Shawn, the legendary editor of The New Yorker:

His literary style was as pure as any in our language. It was singular, colloquial, clear, unforced, thoroughly American and utterly beautiful. Because of his quiet influence, several generations of this country's writers write better than they might have done. He never wrote a mean or careless sentence. He was impervious to literary, intellectual and political fashion. He was ageless, and his writing was timeless.

Our poetry selection for this week is “ Another Doubting Sonnet ,” by Renee Emerson. Readers can view all of America ’s published poems here .

Also, news from the Catholic Book Club: We are reading Norwegian novelist and 2023 Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse’s multi-volume work Septology . Click here to buy the book, and click here to sign up for our Facebook discussion group .

In this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular writer or group of writers (both new and old; our archives span more than a century), as well as poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this will give us a chance to provide you with more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to some of our online content that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.

Other Catholic Book Club columns:

The spiritual depths of Toni Morrison

What’s all the fuss about Teilhard de Chardin?

Moira Walsh and the art of a brutal movie review

​​Who’s in hell? Hans Urs von Balthasar had thoughts.

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a senior editor at America.

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Amazon Announces Summer Book Sale, Featuring Deals on ‘Red, White & Royal Blue,’ ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ and More Bestsellers

By Selena Kuznikov

Selena Kuznikov

• Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment Selects 2024 New Writers Fellowship Class (EXCLUSIVE) 2 days ago
• Kristen Wiig to Present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Carol Burnett at the Gracie Awards (EXCLUSIVE) 2 days ago
• Susan Backlinie, Who Played the First Shark Attack Victim in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 77 3 days ago

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.

Amazon Prime Day doesn’t kick off until July but the behemoth retailer has announced another deals event to tide us over until then. The Amazon Book Sale, announced today, will run from May 15-20, featuring savings up to 50% on print best sellers and up to 80% on Kindle Books.

Early deals include a 29% discount on select Kindle Scribe devices and up to 80% on curated recommendations made by Amazon Books Editors, including “Memphis,” “The Last Bookshop in London,” “Now Is Not the Time to Panic,” “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “Broken (in the best possible way),” and “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song.”

Sarah J. Maas Starter Bundle

‘red, white & royal blue’, popular on variety.

Customers can also save up to 70% on celebrity books, including Viola Davis’ “Finding Me” (Kindle Book only), Molly Shannon’s “Hello Molly!” (Kindle Book only), Anthony Bourdain’s “World Travel: An Irreverent Guide” (Kindle Book only) and Rebel Wilson’s new memoir “Rebel Rising.”

Popular book-to-screen titles are on sale, with savings of up to 50% on titles like “Oppenheimer” inspiration “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Firefly Lane,” “Red, White & Royal Blue” and “The Last Kingdom.”

Other savings include three free months of Kindle Unlimited . All Amazon customers, not just Prime members, can participate in the book sale. A full list of deals available can be found here .

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Books | this week’s bestsellers at southern california’s independent bookstores.

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Funny Story:  Emily Henry

2. James:  Percival Everett

3. Long Island:  Colm Toibin

4. Table for Two: Fictions:  Amor Towles

5. The Women:  Kristin Hannah

6. The Paris Novel:  Ruth Reichl

7. The Familiar:  Leigh Bardugo

8. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store:  James McBride

9. Martyr!:  Kaveh Akbar

10. The Ministry of Time:  Kaliane Bradley

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War:  Erik Larson

2. The Creative Act: A Way of Being:  Rick Rubin

3. Somehow: Thoughts on Love:  Anne Lamott

4. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness:  Jonathan Haidt

5. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder: Salman Rushdie

6. Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World:  Jen Psaki

7. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder:  David Grann

8. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s:  Doris Kearns Goodwin

9. Coming Home:  Brittney Griner, Michelle Burford

10. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook:  Hampton Sides

MASS MARKET

1. Dune:  Frank Herbert

2. Dune Messiah:  Frank Herbert

3. Mistborn: The Final Empire:  Brandon Sanderson

4. Children of Dune:  Frank Herbert

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories:  Oscar Wilde

6. The Diary of a Young Girl:  Anne Frank

7. 1984:  George Orwell

8. The Way of Kings:  Brandon Sanderson

9. Women Who Run With the Wolves:  Clarissa Pinkola Estés

10. The Lies of Locke Lamora:  Scott Lynch

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide:  Rupert Holmes

2. A Court of Thorns and Roses:  Sarah J. Maas

3. The Three-Body Problem:  Cixin Liu, Ken Liu

4. This Summer Will Be Different:  Carley Fortune

5. The Midnight Library:  Matt Haig

6. Rouge:  Mona Awad

7. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo:  Taylor Jenkins Reid

8. Dune:  Frank Herbert

9. A Court of Mist and Fury:  Sarah J. Maas

10. The Alchemist:  Paulo Coelho

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Hidden treasure: Library book was part of the British Museum’s founding collection

First-year student aeryn zahn discovered the link through her source project research.

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Within the worn covers of the centuries-old book, Aeryn Zahn paused to consider the stamps.

They were, in their way, no different than the stamps you find in any old-fashioned library book. One stamp listed it as belonging to the British Museum, while a second stamp referenced a duplicate sale there in 1787.

With these clues, the first-year environmental sciences major traced the book back to the founding collector behind the British Museum itself, a discovery that rocked the Source Project’s Bookmaking stream and Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections.

“The fact that it was specifically owned by Sir Hans Sloane is particularly significant because he is historically thought of as one of the great founding collectors of one of the most extensive collections of books in the world,” said Associate Professor of English Bridget Whearty.

The Source Project gives first-year students the opportunity to conduct meaningful research in the humanities and social sciences. Led by Whearty and Special Collections Librarian Jeremy Dibbell, “Bookmaking: From Stone Tablets to E-Readers” introduces students to the history and evolution of the physical text. Each student then chooses a book that interests them and becomes a “book detective,” chasing down the stories behind the creation of each book, who owned it before it found its way to Binghamton, and how it was marketed, illustrated or preserved, Dibbell explained.

The book Zahn chose — Danielis Heinsii In obitum v. illustr. Iosephi Scaligeri — probably wouldn’t be considered a compelling read today. Published in Leiden, it contains a funeral sermon by Daniel Heinsius memorializing classics scholar Joseph Scaliger, who died in 1609, the year of publication; it also includes a second Scaliger funeral sermon by Dominique Baudius and a 1613 essay by Heinsius on Greek epigrams bound into the volume later.

Sloane’s name isn’t listed anywhere in the physical book, said Zahn, who traced its history through the British Museum stamp.

“They color-coded their stamps and had specific stamp designs based on where the book came from,” Zahn explained. “That stamp was from the Sloane collection. I confirmed it was his because I found the catalog records of this collection.”

While Zahn described her discovery as “largely by accident,” her teachers disagreed, saying that “this kind of ‘serendipity + hard work’ is how humanities research works.” She made her discovery on a Friday, precipitating a flurry of emails with Jeremy Dibbell.

“I was sort of vibrating,” he quipped. “It’s not the sort of thing that comes along every day.”

Reading the emails, Whearty gasped at the discovery: Sloane looms large over the book-collecting world and has received renewed attention as scholars assess how much of his wealth and collection were founded on slavery. After his death, the British Parliament purchased Sloane’s collections and used them, among others, to establish the world-famous British Museum.

“Scholars have determined that as many as 10,000 of Sloane’s books were sold off as duplicates by the British Museum, and through Aeryn’s discovery, we now know that one of those books ended up at Binghamton,” Dibbell said.

It wasn’t an easy history to confirm. The British Library’s Sloane Printed Books database has been down since October because of a catastrophic cyberattack. In a workaround, Dibbell found a digitized copy of a microfilm containing thousands of black-and-white images of handwritten pages from Sloane’s own catalog — and the book was on it.

“A huge part of the significance of Aeryn’s find is that it really shows what well-supported, determined first-year students are capable of,” Whearty said. “The Source Project is an incredible program.”

Zahn doesn’t yet know how Binghamton obtained the book, which probably landed in the library by at least the early 1980s. However, she discovered some of the other hands the book had passed through following its time in the Museum. To continue tracing its past, she has signed up for the Source Project’s optional third semester.

“And then, hopefully, I can write something that gets published,” she said.

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