This is going around and is innacurate so please read this in-depth explanation by @TheLincoln which contains some info provided by a lead industry analyst from NPD BookScan which shows by the dozen books is wrong. In short, most major publishers sell--
countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-book…

https://twitter.com/Bad_Hand_Books/status/1698728126296027517

@TheLincoln a lot more than a dozen books. Lincoln explains it well in his analysis, which shows that sometimes a book may mean things like a coloring book or MadLibs, and that these numbers account for lots of self-published titles which may sell very small numbers.

American Dirt has sold until now 650,000 copies in hardcover according to Bookscan (the trade tool for book sales counts). It's a massive hit. For comparison, my novel, Mexican Gothic, which ended up 12 weeks on the NYTs best seller list, sold 166,000 hardcovers I'm only talking about hardcovers, of course. Once you count ebook, audio, library and paperback sales American Dirt has made stratospheric profits. To use American Dirt as an example of a downtrodden book is laughable. It had the might of all of publishing behind it.