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Old 11-29-2010, 11:45 PM   #45
Andrew H.
Grand Master of Flowers
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Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase View Post
I don't get it. Nothing in the story suggests that the Indie publishers are turning these "midlist" authors into genuine hit makers. Who cares that someone who's book only sells 15,000 got published at all? Well, I guess 15,000 out of the world's 5 billion people care.

What kind of attention should such an author get from one of the big publishers?

Sounds to me like the big publishers aren't losing anything by losing these authors. Nor, frankly, is the "reading public" gaining all that much in a book that only 15,000 people are interested in. Heck, I'm sure I could get 100 people to read any book I would write with no publisher at all.

Lee
I think that's really pretty reasonable, if, as wikipedia suggests, the US is publishing 275,000 books *per year*. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_p...untry_per_year" class="wikilink" title="MR Wiki entry">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_p...untry_per_year

I don't read a lot of bestsellers, nor a lot of series, so I would hate if the only fiction that could be published were those types of books. But with 275,000 books published per year, it doesn't seem like the market is very constrained.

I do think it's good that the fans of the midlist books selling around 15,000 copies have a way to continue reading authors that they like. But, yeah, it's hard for me to see that the publishers are making a mistake by dropping these writers.
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