Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
And that is exactly the golden world that a small handful of elite authors live in.
The 99% rest of the authors world has to deal with publishers who are happy to take any talent as long as it is willing to sell for less, and there is plenty of decent talent for them to choose from.
Because as I said, car dealers are bidding for your attention.
But authors are bidding for the publishers' attention (not the other way around).
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There is a difference between an elite author and an author that has a steady audience. While elite author is the one that signs the big bucks contracts, the authors with a steady audience tend to have good relationships with their publishers as well.
Few of the major publishers are happy to take any talent as long as they are willing to sell for less. They are looking for talent that will at least let them break even. A while back, I posted a link that said that the normal burdened cost of publishing a book is 50K. That's before it hits the market and excluding any up front payment to the author.
There are, of course, publishers who are happy to publish any level talent. They used to be called vanity publishers.
I doubt that 99% of authors fall to that level. Perhaps 99% of would be authors do, but most working authors don't.