From: Richard HendricksTo: 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