Friedrich --

A woman I was lunching with who works at a large literary agency told me an amazing fact. Her agency represents over 3000 authors. Guess how much of the agency's income is brought in by their top 10 authors.

Ready? The answer is 25%. Wow: 1/4 of the money this company makes is brought in by 1/300th of its authors. (And one of their top 10 authors has been dead for some years now.) I wonder what percentage of their revenue is brought in by the bottom 1500 of their authors?

And people talk about book-writing as though it's a career. It isn't a career; it's a crapshoot.

Best,

Michael

You kind of mentioned this already at

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000809.html

It sounds like the industry is designed to operate that way. But I like the odds of hitting it big though. If you are able to get yourself represented by that agency then you have a 1 in 300 chance of making it big. These odds are a great deal better then winning the lottery. This is actually encouraging news.

Posted by: ShipShape on October 19, 2003 12:28 PM






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