5 ms·

Oh I've heard that. The classic "third book" being the one that goes viral. (Gillian Flynn, Dan Brown, etc.) I agree with you on considering most books (most b

Oh I've heard that. The classic "third book" being the one that goes viral. (Gillian Flynn, Dan Brown, etc.) I agree with you on considering most books (most books don't market), but even trying to learn from the successful books isn't entirely encouraging. Even the best ones don't see a lot of reads. But the industry is rapidly changing. We don't all watch the same three television channels anymore. Niche content is more the norm than mass marketed content. I think the whole "creator economy" is still in its infancy, and we have yet to see whether it will actually allow creators to monetize in a meaningful way. But it's worth engaging with it as an experiment to see what happens!

vidarh 5y ago
It's not just that the third book is what takes off, but that sales of book 1 and 2 rarely takes off before book 3 is out because people hold off and might sign up to your mailing list etc. but won't read until they know there's more coming. I do certainly think the market is massively geared towards a tiny number of best-sellers, but there are a number of people who still have success with modest sales of individual books simply by focusing more on building a back catalogue and marketing to a fan base more likely to want to buy "everything". You can afford to spend quite a lot more on ads if a single sale might lead to 20 more than if one book is all you have. But that require you to think about it as a business, and a lot of writers don't want to deal with that bit.