During the 1990's, Oracle books were among the top-selling computer books, with many Oracle books selling over 100k copies, making millionaires of the authors lucky enough to achieve stellar book sales.  Since the heyday of the 1990's when a typical Oracle book would sell tens of thousands of copies, the market has matured and as of 2007, the typical Oracle DBA book sells less than 4,000 copies. 

Source of data for Oracle bestseller book data

For current Oracle bestsellers, you can see the bestselling books based on their Amazon Sales Rank by using Snap Scan, a great tool to find book sales.  Let's take a look at the historical sales of Oracle books.  For accurate sales tracking you can buy a subscription to "Bookscan" a point-of-sale database that tracks the exact number of copies sold for any book published.  However, we cannot disclose the actual sales numbers, but below are the ranks, as well as web links disclosing sales of bestselling Oracle books.

The top-10 Oracle bestsellers of all time

According to Nielsen Bookscan (as of March 1, 2007), these are the bestselling Oracle books of all time:

RANK	AUTHOR	TITLE	COST $	PUBLISHER
1	LONEY KEVIN	ORACLE8I: THE COMPLETE REFERENCE	69.99	MCGRAW HILL
2	FEUERSTEIN STEVEN	ORACLE PL/SQL PROGRAMMING	54.95	O'REILLY
3	LONEY KEVIN	ORACLE9I DBA HANDBOOK	59.99	OSBORNE
4	LONEY KEVIN	ORACLE9I: THE COMPLETE REFERENCE	79.95	OSBORNE
5	BURLESON DONALD K.	UNIX FOR ORACLE DBAS POCKET RE	9.95	O'REILLY
6	URMAN SCOTT	ORACLE9I PL SQL PROGRAMMING WI	49.99	OSBORNE
7	ABBEY MICHAEL	ORACLE 9I: A BEGINNER'S GUIDE	39.99	OSBORNE
8	GENNICK JONATHAN	ORACLE SQL PLUS: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE	39.95	O'REILLY
9	FEUERSTEIN	ORACLE PL/SQL LANG POCKET REFERENCE	9.95	O'REILLY
10	KREINES DAVID C.	ORACLE SQL: THE ESSENTIAL REFERENCE	39.95	O'REILLY

As the author of over 30 Oracle books, I'm often asked how much an author can earn.  It's a nebulous question since the author has exclusive control over their sales.  A well-written book always sells well, even in a flooded market.

The 100,000 club

It's clear that the most popular Oracle books address general Oracle topics and PL/SQL programming.  In the Oracle database book market we see these self-reported sales numbers, in descending order of reported copies sold:  (Note:  These are unverified, and they may be marketing hyperbole): 

• Kevin Loney - Noted on Amazon as the bestselling Oracle author.  It appears that Kevin Loney, is responsible for more than one-third of the 2,500,000 total sales of Oracle Press over the past decade. We also see a claim of over 700,000 copies in sales of Loney's Oracle Press books:

"The books, which have sold more than 700,000 copies combined, are now available in eight different languages."

• Stephen Feuerstein claims that his O'Reilly book ?Oracle PL/SQL Programming? has sales approaching a quarter-million copies:

"Author of "Oracle PL/SQL Programming," which has sold about 250,000 copies"

• Scott Urman, author of Oracle9i PL/SQL Programming claims sales of 140,000 copies:

"Guaranteed best-seller--previous editions of this book have sold over 140,000 copies"

• Don Burleson - Leading the pack in the number of unique Oracle book titles (34 titles), I wrote five books for Oracle Press and two O'Reilly books, including the #5 all-time bestseller.

• George Koch - George claims over 100,000 copies sold for his Oracle8 book, later co-written by Kevin Loney:

"With more than 100,000 copies sold, Oracle8: The Complete Reference is the "must have" book for all Oracle DBAs"

• Rich Niemiec, author of Oracle9iPerformance Tuning Tips & Techniques claims sales of more than 30,000 copies:

How much to Oracle book authors earn?

Because Oracle books are sold to book stores at a deep discount (up to 70% off the SRP), the royalties are usually paid as a percentage of the actual sale price.  For example, a $60 book sold to the stores at 60%-off would yield a royalty based on 10% of $24, or $2.40 per copy sold.

Also, some publishers like Rampant TechPress allow inexpensive foreign re-prints that allow Oracle professionals in developing nations to get high-quality Oracle information at a small fraction of the price of USA publishers.  These altruistic publishing arrangements increase international books sales dramatically, but have very small author royalties.

Most publishers pay their authors between 10% -15% of net sales. For example, O'Reilly publishes their Oracle author royalty rate, stating 10%, and 5% for foreign translations:

"We will pay you a royalty of 10% of all net income we receive as a result of our distribution of the book, in any form, printed, electronic, or other, or from the license or sale to third parties of any rights in a derivative work.

For translated editions published by O?Reilly?s own subsidiaries, we will pay a royalty of 5% of net income."

Smaller niche publishers like Rampant TechPress have a lower overhead and offer 15% royalties:

"Rampant understands that our authors are our greatest asset and has developed a unique model to maximize author compensation.   To maximize author revenue, Rampant does not pay an advance, thereby allowing the author to enjoy a 15% royalty on net sales. 

Rampant has no hidden clauses or cryptic foreign distribution rights.  Our authors get 15% of the net revenue from their books, with no hassles and no adversarial negotiations.  Because all Rampant authors are leaders in their area of expertise, all authors receive the same 15% royalty rate."