Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
I love these kinds of posts that are made to prove that success is just around the corner for self-publishing authors. Smashwords alone has more than 50,000 authors and nearly 140,000 books listed. Who knows how many more authors there are that are exclusive to Amazon. But just using the 50,000 Smashwords authors, the 36 success stories represent 0.00072% of authors -- not very good odds in any gambler's book.
The reality is that very few authors will be successful as self-publishers.
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Very few authors ever were successful as authors.
The only real difference nowadays is that the gatekeepers have been whacked over the head, and the READERS get to decide who's successful or not.
Is this good for literature or bad for literature? Depends on who you ask, I guess. The writer of the article referenced in the original post is whining about not getting advances, nothing more. But that system was dying before ebooks - it was conglomeration and the reliance on blockbusters that was killing that model, not the Internet.