Think you are going to make money by writing a book? Think again. Elle Griffin has a longish post about the publishing industry wherein I found this:
I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).
I picked up a murder mystery by James Patterson at Powell's a few weeks ago. It was not terrible, but it wasn't very good either. I abandoned it after a couple of chapters.
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