Nielsen Bookscan numbers are not always a good indicator of real-world sales.
The other day my paperback publisher told me they’d sold a total of n copies of Hild. On the other hand, for the same period Bookscan shows sales of 0.6 n. I have less exact figures for the hardcover but I think they’re roughly comparable. This surprised me because reports I’ve seen indicate Bookscan captures 75-80% of points-of-sale.
If you factor in digital sales, which Bookscan doesn’t report*, then the figure reflects less than half my market. I knew that Hild was doing well via channels that often don’t report to Bookscan (smaller independents mostly) but, still, I was surprised.
In a year or so, when the final print and digital picture is clear to me, I’ll revisit this, complete with pretty graphs. For now here’s my back-of-the-envelope estimate: for Hild, Bookscan gets 46.5% of real-world sales.
* I’m sure it would love to, but Amazon owns a big chunk of the market (65% in the US and far more in the UK) and it won’t share that data.
Nicola Griffith 
I know one thing about Hild sales: it was the tenth bestselling title of 2014 at my shop. Check it out.
That's great company to be in, thank you. Thank you for handselling Hild to readers who might not have thought of it, otherwise.