Gavin comments on Fifty Shades of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Less Wrong

18 Post author: PhilGoetz 24 July 2014 12:17AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (86)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Gavin 25 July 2014 07:01:15PM *  7 points [-]

In the publishing industry, it is emphatically not the case that you can sell millions of books from a random unknown author with a major marketing campaign. It's nearly impossible to replicate that success even with an amazing book!

For all its flaws (and it has many), Fifty Shades had something that the market was ready for. Literary financial successes like this happen only a couple times a decade.