Top all-time · #2833
Lincoln Michel
Personal blog · countercraft.substack.comwritingculture
Lincoln Michel writes Counter Craft, a personal blog at countercraft.substack.com about writing and culture. Since 2021, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “Most books don't sell only a dozen copies”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Lincoln Michel's Countercraft posts examine how many books sell, citing Bookscan and NPD sales data, and also cover reading and writing craft. Commenters cite the sales-data posts as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
fiction craft, publishing demystification, weird books, other things.
Most-linked posts?
- Most books don't sell only a dozen copies6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-09-10
- /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen/comment/88835244 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-09-10
- What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-23
- The long and short of novel lengths3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-04-23
- Fairy Tales as MFA Antidote2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-03
- What Not Reading Does to Your Writing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-22
What Hacker News says?
Just going to drop this here: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-... This comes up constantly and it’s just wrong.
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen
on “No one buys books”Submitted Most books don't sell only a dozen copies as a story · 224 points
HN discussionBookscan numbers are highly inaccurate and represent a floor. https://www.comicsbeat.com/just-how-accurate-is-bookscan-any... https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-...
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen
on “3x new books added to the Pirate Library Mirror”Submitted Short Little Difficult Books as a story · 210 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of an article [1] (that I think I may have even seen initially on HN) analysing what writing looks like when treated like TV (consciously or subconsciously). It's a fascinating read and it made me more mindful of interiority in my own writing. [1]: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/what-not-reading-does-to...
Comment linking /p/what-not-reading-does-to-your-writing
on “To become a better writer, read as much as you can”Submitted Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies (2022) as a story · 92 points
HN discussionPretty long post for "I know that I know nothing". However, there is gold in the comment section: Kristen McLean actually throws some numbers at us [1]. "66% of those books from the top 10 publishers sold less than 1,000 copies over 52 weeks". Well, uh, that's what I thought. Interesting nonetheless. [1] https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-...
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen/comment/8883524
on “Most books don't sell only a dozen copies”Submitted Defending adverbs exuberantly if conditionally as a story · 86 points
HN discussionHe still writes about this sort of stuff if anybody is curious: https://countercraft.substack.com/people/2796313-lincoln-mic...
Comment linking /people/2796313-lincoln-michel
on “An In-Depth Look at What/How/Why Books Sell (2016)”Submitted What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last as a story · 57 points
HN discussionThat was super interesting to me as well. The full set of values is here: > The data below includes frontlist titles from [top ten publishers]... 45,571 unique ISBNs ... for the last 52 weeks (thru week ending 8-24-2022). > In this dataset: >>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572…
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen/comment/8883524
on “Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies (2022)”Submitted Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good as a story · 25 points
HN discussion> The DOJ stated that of 58,000 trade titles published annually in the U.S., 1/2 sell fewer than 12 copies. Someone from NPD disputed the DOJ's claim, stating that of 45,571 frontlist ISBNs from the top 10 U.S. publishers, 15% (not 50%) sold less than 12 copies. Another 51% sold between 12 and 999 copies. Still not great. ( https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell- ...) And that's a bad thing beca…
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-
on “Publishers Lose Their Shit After Authors Push Back on Their Attack on Libraries”Submitted Processing: Mattie Lubchansky Wrote and Illustrated Simplicity as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThere were some shockers that came out in the PRH trial, including how little major publishers spend on marketing for the books and (related) stats describing the minuscule number of books that are sold. The DOJ stated that of 58,000 trade titles published annually in the U.S., 1/2 sell fewer than 12 copies. Someone from NPD disputed the DOJ's claim, stating that of 45,571 frontlist ISBNs from the top 10 U.S. publis…
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen/comment/8883524
on “Publishers Lose Their Shit After Authors Push Back on Their Attack on Libraries”Submitted Newspapers Are Recommending AI-Hallucinated Novels as a story · 12 points
HN discussionOh, hey. I was just looking at this article the other day. I think this article makes some good points, but it's a little too absolutist about this data. As far as I can tell, if you are an author or industry professional , you can get access to the following data: * If you want data on your own books: sign up for Amazon Author Central and they'll give you the BookScan data on your books. This is free. https://press…
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen/comment/8883524
on “Where is all the book data?”Submitted The long and short of novel lengths as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI'd agree that the pattern is typical. That said, substantiating Substack's actual total income would be helpful to the argument. But generally, see total corporate earnings or market cap vs. size, or book sales (recent discussion, some dispute over numbers: < https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-... > < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794673 >)
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen
on “Please stop calling it the ‘newsletter economy’”Submitted Novels and Novellas and Tomes, Oh My! as a story · 10 points
HN discussion> Wrote a book, published nine years ago. This might work for some writers and books, but not for others. There was this one Tweet that went into detail about what some trial documents revealed about a particular publisher: https://twitter.com/aprilhenrybooks/status/15662306587665039... > In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those…
Comment linking /p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen
on “Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?”Submitted A luminous, brave, and unputdownable article about blurbs as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted What It Means That Hachette Just Canceled an AI Novel as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why You Should Still Build Your Raft of Art in the Sea of Slop as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Not Reading Does to Your Writing as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Which books last and which don't as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted LLMs Are Revealing How Low the Bar Is (and Lowering It Even Further) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why BookScan Is Different from Book Sales (Different from Royalty Statements) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Surf's Up in Slop City as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Books as Art Projects as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
