Is “The Chaos Scenario” a best seller? Well, yes.
OK, it is no “Going Rogue,” that pack of lies offered up by noted ignoramus Sarah Palin. Truth be told, it’s also no “Outliers.” But since its publication it has been a top business book on Amazon.com in each of the advertising, marketing and media categories. It’s been especially strong as a Kindle edition, where at any given time it is in the top 1000, 3000, or 5000 Kindle selections — this out of a pool of about a half million titles. At this writing, we’re at 2,869.
It’s hard to know our overall sales to actual book buyers, because we can’t track sales at retail in brick-and-mortar stores; we can only extrapolate from sales to stores.
Our best guess is that more than 5,000 actual books are in actual readers hands, increasing each month by about 750 copies. Not bad for a book published by a tiny little start-up without a penny spent in advertising.
Granted, 5,000 seems like a kind of pitiful total, until you consider this: the average U.S. book sells only 250 copies a year and less than 3000 in its lifetime. This according “Ten Awful Truths About Book Publishing” by Steve Piersanti, president of Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
