Book Sales of Post Office and Women (1 Viewer)

Can anyone find the copies sold during the 70's of his first novels- namely Post Office, but also Factotum/Women.

I can see Buk lived very moderately up until the early 80s and was wondering about how much/distribution(would it have been found in the big bookstores of the day - or was it a book that sold say....in that 20-25,000 region - including Europe).

Without gettng into the whole Martin arrangement financially, just wanting to get an idea of number for a niche writer during that time such as Bukowski was considered by many.
 
https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/how-rare-is-my-signed-and-numbered-copy-of-whatever.6027/
I can see Buk lived very moderately up until the early 80s...
He bought a house in 1978, but he didn't buy it with Black Sparrow royalties (his monthly income from BSP at the time was only $500 - or about $1800 in today's money - not enough to rent a house in Los Angeles). It was European royalties that really brought in the money for him during his lifetime. For example, an 1974 a German translation of Poems Written Before Jumping Out Of An 8 Story Window sold 50,000 copies. Black Sparrow may have sold 50,000 copies total of all five of his books they had in print that year.

Around the time he closed Black Sparrow, Martin was quoted as saying that he had sold two million copies of Bukowski books. That sounds about right, but in an email a year or two before the sale he characterized the Bukowski royalties as "pennies." But the fact that HarperCollins bought the rights for Ecco would seem to indicate that the sales were - and would continue to be - steady. Looking around today it certainly seems like Bukowski is more popular now than he was when he was alive. The Internet is probably responsible for a lot of that popularity.
would it have been found in the big bookstores of the day...
In the 70s, not so much. In the 80s and on until bookstores disappeared, yes, you could find them in the big chains.
 

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