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Friday, March 15, 2013

Books You Sold How Many Books?

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 7:07 AM

if you know anyone who still thinks they can get rich by publishing a book, you should urge them to go check out this AV Club interview with Neal Pollack about all the books he's sold in his career. Turns out, "Ten thousand copies [of each title] appears to be my threshold." Pollack doesn't talk that much about his last traditionally published book, Stretch. (In fact, the only mention of it refers to it as Stretched.) Maybe that's because Stretch was such a bad book that it could get you drummed out of traditional publishing forever. But otherwise, it's an interesting portrait of someone who has failed in many different ways and is now trying to be honest about his capabilities. And it should scare off all those folks who think that the book-and-movie-deal they're carrying around in their head is going to set them up for retirement.

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The book-and-movie-deal dream has been dead for a while. Now it's the realityTV-and-sextape-deal dream.

Posted by Sir Vic on March 15, 2013 at 7:49 AM

Or this guy's mass production dream come true:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1a…

Posted by gloomy gus on March 15, 2013 at 8:06 AM

Ha. Currently reading thrifted Never Mind The Pollacks (admittedly after a few bookstores not buying and Powell's e-buyback denial) and it's awesome and weird and awfully stupid. It's Gump, It's Gump, It's Gump. Thanks for the link.

Posted by gttrgst on March 15, 2013 at 8:29 AM

Book and a movie is for idiots and suckers.

Wanna strike it rich? Write school textbooks.

Posted by mayberrymachiavelli on March 15, 2013 at 10:15 AM

@4 yeah, but you have to rewrite 2 chapters of the book every year, and change the supplements, so while it looks like sales per textbook are high, sales per unit of writing and work needed to write the book are not that high.

Best to write five-volume trilogies, the profit is in the 2nd through 6th books and the movie/film/video/game rights and work thereof.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on March 15, 2013 at 11:08 AM

I really enjoyed Neal Pollack's Anthology of American Literature. I love his "Throughout my life... I have been there" line in the hilarious forward or preface or whatever it was. It's sad to learn that his other writings suck.

Posted by QQ megu on March 15, 2013 at 3:10 PM