I’ve been digging into the publishing industry numbers since my debut book landed on the USA Today bestseller list. I pulled the actual data. Here’s the funnel:
4.2 million books were published in the U.S. last year. That’s 80,000+ hitting the market every single week.
But here’s what most people miss: those new releases don’t just compete with each other.
They compete with 300,000+ titles BookScan tracks as actively selling any given week.
Atomic Habits came out in 2018. The Very Hungry Caterpillar came out in 1969, and it’s currently sitting at #22 on the national bestseller list, outselling most books that came out this month!
Out of all of that, just 150 books make the USA Today national bestseller list each week.
The stat that surprised me most:
That’s the top 0.05% of all titles with active sales.
Not books ever published. Books people bought that week, going up against everything from debut authors to decade-old classics with years of word-of-mouth behind them.
Then there’s the week-two cliff. I pulled two consecutive weeks of the full 150-book list and ran the numbers.
Only 36% of books that debut on the list make it back the following week. The other 64% are one-week wonders.
Outrageous Startup Growth made it both weeks. I doubt it this underdog can make it a third, but that’s ok.
The book industry is brutal. Most books sell fewer than 1,000 copies over their entire lifetime. Even getting on the list means you cleared a bar most authors never reach.
So when I see this book finding its readers, I’m not taking it lightly. I spent 20 years inside high-growth startups figuring out why some products scale and most don’t.
The people picking up this book are the ones who want an edge: an extra insight, a new perspective, a real framework they can put to work. That’s who I wrote it for.
If that’s you, this is your 🟢 sign to stop procrastinating. Link below!