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It's not a good thing to point to any one writer's career and generalize out from there. Writers are not fungible. Books are not fungible. Example: Magician has been continuously in print in English since 1982. Go back and look at a list of titles that were published in November of 1982 and see how many of those are still in print. Few. I've known Mike Stackpole since his days at Flying Buffalo in the 1970s. He is not your typical writer. Novels are not even his main thing, just one of many things Mike does well. He's a clinic in how to write a dozen different things and get paid doing all of them. One major presumption in your post, Keith, is that publishers wouldn't "let" Mike publish certain things. First, there are a lot of publishers and they're not all alike, wanting the same stuff, etc. It's more accurate to say Mike wasn't profitable in a model that made sense to traditional publishing. 5,000 titles in hardcover is barely making it these days. 5,000 in paperback isn't worth setting up production. 5,000 self-published at $10 a copy where the author keeps 80% after on-line costs and Mike puts $40,000 in his pocket. It's a different business model. As a reader wanting to see an author's backlist, you have no idea what the publishing models out there are or what's available. When I broke in in 1982, I didn't have to compete for shelf space with 30 Feist backlist books. A new writer today does. My backlist IS the current midlist. So a midlist writer like Mike has less shelf space out there for his new works. Publishing evolves and writers like Mike who are smart and pay attention to how the business works will find their audience. Writers who don't pay attention are going to find themselves looking for jobs. In my case, it would be a waste of energy on my part to self-publish. I'm at the top of the list in the field (thank you, God Of Publishing) so generalizing out from my experience is even less valid than doing so from Mike's. Best, R.E.F. ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
