: How fast do traditionally-published books sell after they have been published? Of course there are many answers to the question of how fast major publishers move their books after publication,

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My mother in law is published, and based on her experience, I don't think most authors find out unless they start making best seller lists. Best seller lists are defined by first week sales, not to buyer's, but to stores. My understanding is that the metrics aren't really available to most authors (or they weren't five years ago). So a week by week break down is only going to come from the publishers.

It does make sense from a mental exercise position that most books in both the old and new models would sell more up front with the advertising. In the old you'd have more copies and it would be on the new releases shelf. In the new, algorithms would push it until they had determined it was stale.

But that likely only holds for the average. The success stories can't possibly work that way as they tend to have longer lifecycles of sales and multiple printings.

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Your point about the first weeks of sales are right, especially due to the promotional blitz, TV/radio/blog interviews, early-release reviews, New York Times bestseller list (a big thing in some public libraries), etc. It's similar to some blockbuster films that make a ton of cash the first weekend and then more reviews come out or the hype just settles down.
Here's an insightful quote:

"First-week sales typically account for about 30 percent of the total, thanks to the publicity blitzes that accompany publishers’ biggest releases."
— "Sales of Hillary Clinton’s New Memoir Drop Sharply in 2nd Week" (4th paragraph)

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