The collapse of popular website Booktopia is highlighting how much Australia’s publishing industry relies on patriotic retailers to keep itself both diverse and financially viable.

Printing books is a numbers game, and the bench line for an Australian “best seller” might surprise you.

In the United States, where the New York Times publishes its globally revered bestseller lists, a book needs to sell between 1,000 to 10,000 copies in just one week to make the cut.

The Australian market is much smaller and unless you’re putting out Liane Moriarty, publishers don’t bet on overseas sales to push a title.

Meaning, for a mid-range publisher, an homegrown bestseller is a book that sells 5,000 copies — over its entire lifetime.

Bigger houses are more conservative, cracking open the champagne at about 10,000 copies.

And these days, it’s probably not always Dom Pérignon.

Rising costs

Putting out a book is getting more expensive.

The price of freight and paper is going up, and publishers have been reluctant to jack prices in response, fearing they’ll spook Australia’s dwindling number of readers during a cost-of-living crisis.

“We’re seeing margins get a lot thinner over the last five years,” Andrew Ledovskikh, IBISWorld senior industry analyst recently told me about Australia’s publishing industry.

This means the numbers game is getting even more important to putting out an Australian title. 

Want to crack 5,000? You need a supportive retailer.

Who is actually helping publishers sell Australian books?

Australian book sales data is weirdly opaque.

The best source is said to be Nielsen Bookdata, which puts out a weekly report called the Top 5000.

Publishers pay a lot of money to get access to this litmus test into Australian readers, and Nielsen makes them sign contracts saying they won’t share what they get externally.

(Especially not to journalists. My email is terzon.emilia@abc.net.au if you’d like to be an anonymous source.)

The Nielsen data is said to be grouped into three sectors: independent bookstores; chains and online retailers; and discount department stores (DDS) like Big W and Kmart.