Print-on-demand publisher Lulu.com has done a study on the lifespan of best-sellers and concluded that the number of weeks a book stays on the bestseller list has fallen to one-seventh of the average 40 years ago. This means that more books are becoming best-sellers, but that best-sellerdom means less in terms of revenue expectations. It’s a pretty long-tail-ish conclusion: success is a lot more niche and small-s than it was back in the heyday of blockbusters. On the plus side, the physical costs associated with book-publishing are also way down, making smaller print runs viable, and Internet-era retailers like Amazon can sell millions of different titles.
The findings of the 50-year study are announced as America’s book trade gathers in Washington for Book Expo (May 18-21), its largest annual get-together, while the movie of “The Da Vinci Code,” the mother of all recent bestsellers, goes on worldwide release (May 19). The study was conducted by Lulu.com (www.lulu.com), the world’s fastest-growing source of print-on-demand books.
The average number of weeks that a new No. 1 bestseller stayed top of the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List has fallen from 5.5 in the 1990s, 14 in the 1970s and 22 in the 1960s to barely a fortnight last year — according to the study of the half-century from 1956-2005.
In the 1960s, fewer than three novels reached No. 1 in an average year; last year, 23 did.
“The blockbuster novel is heading the way of the mayfly,” says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com, referring to the famously short-lived insect.
(via Collision Detection)