[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

The market 'lays him off', so to speak. Self-employed people shut down non-profitable ventures when they reach the point where they decide they're not getting what they wanted out of it. It's the underlying risk of the venture that was my point.

The economics of book writing don't seem that straightforward to me. Every book could be considered a venture, and writing a new one can give new opportunities.

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

My apologies to Sil_liS for taking the thread off-track. I'll stop.

No apologies necessary. I don't feel like joining the off topic discussion, but there's no need to stop on my account.

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

That being said, if we restrict it to fiction (I am not sure about technical books), both books and shorter fiction, then only a fraction of one percent of writers seem to be able to sustain a career where being an author is their only job. My guess is, in all genres that the number is probably under a few thousand at any given time.

But does that mean that any writer that makes it to the self-sustaining zone takes the source of income from another author that is in the zone?

Originally Posted by Joykins

You can't. In fact, the only thing that the market can do is post sales so disappointing the writer gives up, at which point the writer may or may not be laboring solely out of love or some sort of hypergraphia.

Is this how some blogs start?

Originally Posted by Joykins

From the point of view of the publisher, though, each title represents a certain amount of sunk costs. So selling 10 books of the same title represents a much greater profit than 1 sale of each of 10 titles. The effect is magnified for the author, though, as (perhaps) 9 of those 10 titles sales don't feed the author's revenue stream at all.

This means that it is in the publisher's best interest to limit the number of titles on the market.

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

Money is one measure of value. Most writers should also have a few other measuring tools at hand.

Like the numbers of readers or maybe fan mail?

Originally Posted by caleb72

It's a resource measurement. It stands for "Full Time Equivalents".

Thanks!

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Economically? There have always been too many authors.

Emotionally, it doesn't take that many readers to keep an author going.

More readers would benefit the author both economically and emotionally.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

"The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain."
Martin Luther

Interesting point of view, but I've always liked seeing shelves filled with books. Am I evil?

Originally Posted by patrickt

How many readers are there? In the U.S., with our current educational system, it's a shrinking pool.

I don't think that that is necessarily true. People do read, but many just don't have the patience or the time for books. The fact that the number of blogs keeps growing would indicate that the number of blog readers keeps increasing as well.