From: Richard Hendricks 
To: Multiple recipients of list HORROR 
Subject:      King publishing empire for 1992
Date:         Fri, 26 Mar 1993 15:13:00 CST

     Here are, I think, some interesting numbers gleaned from the
March 1, 1993 *Publishers Weekly* regarding sales of Stephen King
books for 1992.  Not all of these figures are final yet (they are
subject to change due to returns) and do not include sales for
his extensive backlist nor, for example, small press offerings
like the Dark Tower III book from Donald M. Grant.  Nevertheless,
this represents a whole hell of a lot of books.

     Delores Claiborne  ==> 1,317,364 [#1 hardback fiction title]
     Gerald's Game      ==> 1,196,765 [#3 hardback fiction title]
     The Waste Lands    ==>   251,768 [oversize trade paperback]
     Four Past Midnight ==> 3,000,000 [mass market paperback]
     Needful Things     ==> 3,000,000 [mass market paperback]
     Stand [expanded]   ==> 2,500,000 [mass market doorstop]

     Total              ==>11,265,897 books

     And that's just part of what he sold.  The paperback list,
for example, "bottomed out" at 1,000,000 copies sold, so there's
no telling how many S.K. books actually got shipped.  I think D.
M. Grant published around 40,000 copies of *The Waste Lands* in
hardcover (I may be low on this) and most of them probably sold.

     I don't have the exact dollar figures for the suggested list
price of each item above, but using these rough estimates (in
order, $24, $22, $12, $6, $5, $6, + $35 for D.M. Grant's
version), the S. King publishing empire for 1992 scored around:

                          $110,366,782

     Lop off a couple'a 20-30 mil for returns:

                           $80,366,782

     Not a bad gross return on investment for a guy whose first
novel was dug out of the wastebasket by his spouse and who made
him send it to Doubleday.

     Of course, S.K. doesn't *make* all this money, but it
certainly puts the gross national product of many small countries
to shame.

     Richard Hendricks
     University of Wisconsin-Madison

     hendrick@macc.wisc.edu
     hendrick@wiscmacc


[Stephen
	King page]

Ed Nomura