I’m not sure I agree with the conclusion. 50 authors sold more than 500k books over 4 years? 10% of authors sold more than 2000k books? Those are amazing odds. Compare that to the NFL in America where 1 in 100k highschool football players make it to the NFL. A tiny fraction of the risk with the chance of worldwide acclaim and significant royalties? Maybe I should write a book…

This reads like someone who wanted to write only for the money is realizing how difficult that is. Every career is like this. This is a feature of capitalism.

“There are over 400,000 McDonalds employees but only 10,000 managers. 39 out of 40 people who pour their hearts out into each McDouble won’t be able to make a living!”

“The US has almost a million gas stations but these are owned by just 13 companies, preventing new mom and pop gas stations and killing off the thousands of smaller stations across the nation. People who wanted to run a small business now can’t!”

Scarcity is the point.