If You Publish a Book How Many Books Need To Be Sold?

This is a simple question for most people, but it’s also a hard question to answer for some: Once you have a book published – your own book – how many books do you need to sell: How many for you to be happy? How many for you to break even in terms of money and time spent? How many before you say that the book is successful?

Or, in this case, it is let’s do some math here about supply and demand and cost for books.  Your book.

I think that the answer is a personal one, and I can say that right now I am happy that I’ve sold books and that I have an audience of people who have bought them  I set a goal I can see and can reach, sort of like how much I write in a day.  It’s tangible, and something I can do each day.

However, no matter how happy I might be with the current sales of my own book, the key to better sales is to know the bottom line.  If it costs me $100 to write edit and publish a book, then I need to earn $101 before I come close to seeing success.  If my book costs $10 for my readers to buy, and I make $2 off of each book, then I need to sell at least 50 to break even.  This also does not include marketing and the time it takes for me to get people’s attention.

The other thing to think about is selling your book, publishing it is one thing, almost anyone can do that with the use of self-publishing companies, but selling, and maintaing sale sis as important. If your book costs $1000 to create and publish it, and you make $4 a copy you will still have to sell 250 books to break even. That is a lot of book and a lot of effort. That is why you will need to have goals set up and a plan for more book sales.  If you cut down on costs what about quality?

There is a fine balance and it is important to maintain that balance.  What can happen is that initially you will make money writing but you will lose on readers on your next book.