Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
This avoids the self-destructiveness of Lynn Shepherd, but is less plausible. People have a limited book budget, and if they buy more by one author, they will tend to buy less of others. Success by one author no more lifts the incomes of others than a great year for Walmart helps Target.
You could interpret Lawrence in another way -- that he thinks Rowling is increasing the market for her own genres even if decreasing it in others. If so, why is that good?
Rowling seems to give an unusually high percentage of her income to charities. So from that standpoint, you could say that it's better for people to buy her books.
|
People have a finite amount of money, but that doesn't mean they buy a fixed number of books. If they are led to a new genre by following Rowling, they may well simply read more books. The money has to come from somewhere, but it doesn't necessarily mean they will buy less books. Perhaps they stay home and read instead of going out to the movies. You can buy a couple books for the cost of a movie.
If someone is not a reader of crime drama, but buy Rowling's crime drama because Rowling wrote it, that doesn't lessen Shepherd's sales, these people wouldn't have bought a crime drama if it wasn't for Rowling, so Shepherd wouldn't have had the sale anyway.
Blaming your lack of sales on some other author selling books is what hacks do.