> In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books.
Which also had some discussion on HN, where some people suggested that it was somewhat true, while others explored other aspects of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794673
But even the article itself refers to more claims like that, with many suggesting that in writing, like many other industries, there will be a few very successful books/projects, and many that will fall by the wayside (honestly, I'd say the same about most things, from making SaaS products, to game development and art/music). Here's a humbling article that someone wrote: https://hughhowey.com/most-books-dont-sell/
I guess what I'm trying to say here: don't write a book hoping to earn a lot of money. Write a book because you find the experience interesting or fun, and just because you want to write (and publish) a book.
This might work for some writers and books, but not for others.
There was this one Tweet that went into detail about what some trial documents revealed about a particular publisher: https://twitter.com/aprilhenrybooks/status/15662306587665039...
> In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books.
There were also articles that disagreed with the claim: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-...
Which also had some discussion on HN, where some people suggested that it was somewhat true, while others explored other aspects of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794673
But even the article itself refers to more claims like that, with many suggesting that in writing, like many other industries, there will be a few very successful books/projects, and many that will fall by the wayside (honestly, I'd say the same about most things, from making SaaS products, to game development and art/music). Here's a humbling article that someone wrote: https://hughhowey.com/most-books-dont-sell/
I guess what I'm trying to say here: don't write a book hoping to earn a lot of money. Write a book because you find the experience interesting or fun, and just because you want to write (and publish) a book.