By 17. January 1851, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen’s Christmas annual, Juletræet for 1850, had sold nearly 23,000 copies. It’s a remarkable sales figure in a country of fewer than 1.5 million people, many of whom had little-to-no disposable income, and many of whom were barely literate.
My recent foray into Christmas annuals was, shall we say, not quite so commercially successful. (I sold ~15 copies, although my Ko-fi customers (the majority of my sales) were very generous.)