From the article: > The first thing that writers need to understand is that book sales — like advances — are all over the place. This is true even for individu

From the article: > The first thing that writers need to understand is that book sales — like advances — are all over the place. This is true even for individual authors. It’s not unheard of for an author to get roughly similar critical acclaim for their first three novels, yet have them sell 10k, 100k, and 10k respectively. Publishing is full of luck, timing, and unpredictable trends. This is, in my experience, entirely true[1]. If your novel is not selling a hundred thousand copies a year then it doesn't mean it's not a very good book. It just means that the 'word-of-mouth' chatter between readers (which is, in my personal view, by far the biggest driver of book sales) was concentrated around somebody else's novel at the time you were publishing and promoting your novel. [1] I commented about my own lucky book adventure a couple of years back on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549429