Small Press Numbers

Over at Shocklines, a member posed the following query:

What are "normal" small press horror sales?

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I've been reading a lot of small press horror and had a questions about sales. I figured this would be the place to ask because there are a lot of experts here. What is a "normal" number of sales for a small press horror paperback?

I had no idea, but I was quite pleased to see my publisher log in and answer?

We normally do runs of 50-100 copies on first-time authors, 4 or 5 times that if the author is established or has proven him/herself out in the past. For instance, our biggest runs are usually for new Koehler and Meikle titles, though we'll be moving into larger runs for Bob Freeman in the future since his sales have taken off and maintained their selling curve. Depends on the author, how much the author has worked with the staff in prepromotion, and how "marketable" we predict the book will be. OTOH, we've established a relationship with our printers and distributors so turnaround is twice as fast as it was when we first began. If a title sells out early, we can normally have another print run ready to ship to customers in approx. 7 days.

Kind of makes an author feel all warm and fuzzy inside... ;)