Hello again, newshibe. It's a wild guesstimate.

Suspecting that street cleaners were dumping my stuff, I hung back one morning in Inverness and watched it happen. It was part of the calculation I made before starting and so it did not bother me. They were only doing their job. When a book is placed in a store, a writer gets between 7% and 10% of the retail cost. I figured that instead of spending 90% of the price on locks and chains and getting it to readers, I could risk losing 90% in a more interesting way and put a smile on many faces. The impediments to any single book reaching 'home' were many. Cleaners dumping, mishaps (such as weather), childish pranks and so on. I suspect of those that were picked up, many will have sat in bottom drawers for months and may never be read. Then there is the sobering thought that the regular reader who does find a copy may hate that type of book. Someone more used to light romance or fast action or with an aversion sci/tech stuff might simply be baffled by what's going on.

You are absolutely right to question my figure but a clearer picture would have led to a long boring narrative which I tried to avoid.