Reply #113: Huge fallacy to think most writing is fiction/mass market

[Spike89]

The reality is that most books published are non-fiction books written for a very specialized market. Not a single one of my authors has come close to getting rich. They write for a lot of reasons, supporting themselves isn't one of them. However, without the meager royalties, most of them couldn't afford to dedicate the time and effort required.

Even beyond that though is a profound lack of knowledge about the publishing industry itself. There are a few huge commercial publishers and there are thousands of mid-size and small publishers that don't make lots of money but exist to give authors a venue. A great example is poetry. Poetry publishers struggle to just break even, or lose just a bit--when things get tough in the publishing industry, Bantam Books doesn't fold, but dozens of small poetry, art, and boutique publishers do.

A book is not exclusively the product of the author. They may be the star and they do deserve all the credit they can get, but a book is readable because a small army of editors worked on it, type stylists made the form agreeable, artists came up with a cover that helps readers choose it, publicists put cover copy in place to convince buyers to pay, etc. etc.

The romantic notion that the words are all that matters is insulting to every real author as well as everyone who works in publishing to make good books great.