The Pareto Distribution, Contagion, And Book Sales

The Pareto Distribution, Contagion, and Book Sales

The Pareto probability distribution describes book sales along with a wide variety of observable phenomena.  Ask any librarian:  A small number of books account for the majority of items in circulation, while the vast majority of volumes remain on the shelves.  So while the latest Grisham or King may be checked out, you’re sure to find a Steven

Vincent Benet or an Anthony Burgess back in the stacks.

Zanybooks.com, my publishing house, has 26 titles for sale on Kindle.  Of 57 sales in the past nine months, one title accounted for 12, and half the titles went without a buyer.  (Alas, this last group includes all the novels we’ve published using my name as the author.   Our best seller is Paula Morgan’s Side Out for Murder.)

Thus far our sales appear to have taken place completely at random.  Our hope is that as the number of buyers increases, the word about our titles will spread, and our sales will start to accelerate much in the manner of a forest fire, an epidemic, or a welfare case load.

In the 1950’s, the U.S. Federal Government introduced a program designed to provide financial aid to families with dependent children.  Each of the 50 states set up its own independent program for distributing the monies.  In state after state, the following three phenomena occurred:  First, the applications for welfare were submitted at a more or less constant rate.  As the welfare recipients talked up the program among their friends and neighbors, the number of applications began to rise at an ever increasing rate.  Eventually, organizations of  recipients came into existence. These began programs of active recruitment among those eligible for welfare and the number of applications jumped once more.  Among epidemiologists, these three stages are known as zero-order, first-order, and second-order contagion.

A similar experience is the lot of most first-time authors, whether self-published or in the hands of a major publishing house.   First, copies sell more or less at random.  If the book gets into the hands of someone who likes it and is voluble about their like, sales will begin to accelerate.  Alas, only 1 in 500 Amazon readers is likely to write a review, so the selection of the book by a professional reviewer is widely sought after.  Given a positive review or two, sales will accelerate further.  The real kick will come only when editors begin to ask why they haven’t yet received a review of X’s book or Oprah reaches down from the heavens to endorse it.

Alas (this is my third “alas” and I’m sorry about that), newspapers have begun to cut down drastically on the number of books they will review.  Many have eliminated their review section entirely.  The on-line reviewer is crucial to the success or failure of a book.