4 ms·
330 million people, plus 38 more in a neighboring country who speak the same language (and are, therefore, arguably part of the same market). Plus, people stil
by 21723 4y ago
330 million people, plus 38 more in a neighboring country who speak the same language (and are, therefore, arguably part of the same market).
Plus, people still buy books even if the readership rate is low.
Mostly, though, it's our population. If you're a Hungarian-language novelist and you sell to 0.1% of the total market (this is hard to do) you've made food money for a couple years. If you can find a way to get 0.1% of Americans to buy your book, you're a millionaire.
Of course, even getting people to hear about you at all is difficult, especially with "book buzz" hype machines [1] sucking up so much oxygen while delivering disappointing or forgettable books.
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[1] This is the part of traditional publishing I don't like. When bad books get so 7-figure advances and huge marketing campaigns, they cause reader attrition at a population level and this makes the world scarcer for serious writers. Trade publishing still does far more good than harm to society, but the "book buzz" people who run Manhattan could all stop showing up to work and we'd be better off.
- mbg721 4y agoWhat makes the US a single market with 330M people and not a bunch of smaller markets? Is it just that somewhere like Europe has barriers to entry through language and differences in countries' regulation that don't come up in the US?
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoNational identity, culture and distribution. I can relate to a story set in places in the Deep South and Midwest, places I have barely been, because the author speaks to common motifs, assumptions and subtext. (This also lets them play with implication, something lost if one must be explicit about what may lost outside one’s culture.)
- spoonjim 4y agoThe White Anglosphere (UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) has a somewhat shared cultural identity.
- mbg721 4y agoThis reminded me of a tangential complaint: I (in the US) recently bought one of Richard Osman's books, and its setting is more English than actual England is. So why did the publisher insist on adjusting the spelling to "Labor Party"? It's a proper noun, and I'm going to pronounce it "lay-BOOOUUURRR" like I always do... you're not fooling anybody into thinking this took place in New Jersey. Did they think Americans would find the extra U offensive or confusing??
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]