April 15, 2009
| Digital Democracy (For Real) >>
Winner Take All
Wow. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight (and sequels) accounted for 16% of all book sales in the U.S. in the first three months of 2009.
Probably not that unusual in the weird post-Potter publishing world, I know, but still.
(Via @LaunchBooks.)
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By comparison, Ford has about 15% of US market share in the automobile industry, and Toyota 18%. So a single author is somewhere between the Ford and Toyota of books.
Yeah, except there are only a dozen or so car companies. It feels like that's about the right kind of market share for a big one to have. By contrast, there are umpteen (yes, umpteen) authors, each w/ approximately the same production capacity. It's not like you achieve vast economies of scale as a writer (unless you build a Tom Clancy-like branding empire).
In that kind of market, 16% feels, to me, WAY disproportionate.
No, I completely agree. You made explicit the mind-boggling scale I was trying to communicate with the analogy.
Just to reverse it, it would be like if 16% of all the cars you saw on the street were red Toyota Priuses. It would be really, really weird.