I read a lot and I was looking at Book Pages and I realized that many of the reviews were of books that I have no intention of reading. Many authors get famous because their books catch the public's fancy, not because the publishers or literary agents like them. Who agrees with me? I see the young girls and young women go to the bookmobile and empty the shelves of fiction. So somebody reads fiction. The publishers say fiction is ot selling. I don't think they know what's up. Many authors are self publishing now.

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An author obviously can't catch the public's fancy if his or her book doesn't get published. So if it's out there, a publisher must have taken a chance on it. (Book reviews aren't written by publishers, they are written by book critics).

And those authors self-publishing sell an average of 45 to 65 copies, depending on who you believe, including ones they buy themselves. A modestly successful fiction author sells about 5,000 copies. Just because the books you see reviewed don't appeal to you doesn't mean that bookstores aren't jammed with books that would. Expand your horizons. Read reviews from other sources. Find recommended authors at websites like Amazon, where readers assemble lists which are often quite good.

self publishing sounds great, till you realize it is also self marketing. Then all the self publishers start crying about how the book stores don't want to carry their book, or that walmart won't even meet with them. and those books you see getting grabbed up by the handfuls? Guess what a publisher published those too, so some of them have to know what they're doing.

So because you have no intention of reading a book, clearly it won't sell. Tell that to the scores of people who see it in Book Pages and think "Wow, I would really like to read that now." Publishers and agents are not stupid - they are in this business to make money, pure and simple. They don't promote or publish manuscripts because they like them. They publish things that will sell, period. The people that you see buying books at the bookmobile aren't the complete snapshot of the market. Publishers have to think about online sales, discount stores, and brick-and-mortar chain stores. Across the board, non-fiction is selling better than fiction in most markets. That doesn't mean people aren't buying fiction - it just means they aren't buying as broad a swath of it. It means that a publishing house is taking a bigger gamble by picking up a new fiction writer than a new political writer, for example. Again, it's all about the bottom line. Don't romanticize the publishing industry. Many authors do self-publish now. And do you know how many of those authors go on to sell more than about fifty copies of their book? Practically zero - so small a percentage it's basically irrelevant. Books don't sell if they aren't picked up by stores, reviewed by critics, and marketed. Self-published authors do not have those resources, and that's why they aren't making a living as writers.