Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
If the BPHs were losing money on all the titles that don't earn out they would've stopped publishing midlisters.
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Weren't most bestselling authors first non-bestselling authors? Janet Evanovich is one example who now gets $10 million advances. I'm sure I could come up with a bunch more names.
I don't think any of us have to real data to be sure on this. But it seems likely to me that midlist and below authors are profitable to big publishers only because of the few who write breakout bestsellers. When they do, the publisher just hit the jackpot, since they experience high sales volume against a small advance.
Repeated top-of-the-list authors sometimes lose the publisher money because the advance was more than the book earned, however you calculate earnings.