Quote:
Originally Posted by sirbruce
If you're only going to sell 1,000 copies, sure. But it's unlikely any publisher is going to buy your book if they think they can only sell 1,000 copies.
The reason you go with an actual publisher is they'll put your book in retail bookstores and hopefully sell 10,000 or more copies. There's also a better chance that they'll sell foreign rights to the book. And that someone will read it and option film, etc. rights.
If you self-publish your own ebook it's unlikely you'll even sell 1,000 copies and the chances of any of the other things happening are close to zilch.
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That's where you're overestimating the actual publishing business. A 'lot' of books are only selling 1,000 copies (5,000 remember for a NYT best-seller). A lot of writers are being picked up during market trends - the latest being the occult/romance sub-genre. And those books are filling up the shelves at an alarming rate, not all of them can actually reach their actual advance.
The key word in your statement is 'think'. The publishing business is a gambling business with little to no certainty about how the public will react. Again, that's why we so many derivative works, so many clones of what has been popular most recently. It's why you rarely get a surprising novel in any genre - the 'big' publishing houses are too timid to take risks, especially with such razor thin margins on their profits.
To your last point, sure, you might not even sell 1 copy of your indie published book, but you've got to weigh up why you're writing in the first place. If it's to make a living or get rich then it's the worst business in the world to peg your future on.