Quote:
Originally Posted by khalleron
I had a friend who was both a record producer and musician (in the 80s) - his albums used to regularly sell over 100,000 copies, and I can tell you that this has always been true. Most records, CDs and books fail to earn out. This is nothing new.
Only major stars, in either books or music, make significant money from album or book sales. The cost of production is just too high.
I've heard this trotted out, too (Sherman Alexie was the most recent one), but it's really just same as it ever was.
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It's not so much about selling CD's as the music industry taking ALL the money.
There's a breakdown here from Steve Albini
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
This is why when people download music (apart from indie artists who you should buy from) there is no longer any guilt about lost money.
There's also a well-known, at least second-hand tidbit that no matter who a publisher takes on, whatever advance they give they expect to make 10x-20x that back even if the book doesn't do well. So the publisher never really loses.