Re: Don't mistake yourself for the average consumer - Edit 1
Before modification by Werthead at 24/09/2010 08:56:02 AM
It seems that once something gets a bit of visibility, delays often don't matter that much in sales and if there is any difference, it's usually an increase. After all, there have been tens of thousands of fans at the very least that have discovered this series in the past couple of years. They tend to more than make up for any "protest" no-buys. I suspect the print run for the upcoming book will top the quarter-million (or was it a half-million) that the last book had in 2005. After all, after a five year wait then, AFfC was the first #1 NYT Bestseller in the ASOIAF series.
AFFC had a very high print run. I thought it was reported as half a million at the time, but apparently it was around 300,000, which sold out before publication and had to be reprinted immediately. The print run for ADWD I heard was going to be around the 500,000 mark in the USA alone with preperations to reprint ASAP.
ASoIaF's future sales prospects are also going to be affected by the TV series. If ASoIaF's sales increase by even a quarter of the margin that Charlaine Harris's did in the year after TRUE BLOOD started airing, the entire readership of the series will more than double in twelve months. That's pretty sobering.
Believe it or not, online communities tend to be outliers when it comes to predicting bookselling trends. It's been a sobering lesson over the past 9 years for me.
According to some of my contacts, they estimate the importance of the Internet in book-buying habits has risen from perhaps 1% of the audience ten years ago to around 10% now. Unfortunately, most of that 10% is down to mass-media outlets and Amazon. Thusly, Harriet Klausner and Robert Stanek alts continues to have more influence on book-buying habits than any SFF blog in existence
