[lukeschwartz]

The comment should have been the post.

And this is the unsurprising TLDR:

"The long and short of it is publishing is very much a gambler's game, and I think that has been clear from the testimony in the DOJ case. It is true that most people in publishing up to and including the CEOs cannot tell you for sure what books are going to make their year."

[fancyfredbot]

Maybe this is splitting hairs but this didn't make publishing seem like gambling to me. It sounds like if I can publish enough titles at a low enough cost per title I'm guaranteed to make money.

[lukeschwartz]

You're guaranteed to make little money, yes. The big publishers make most of their revenue from a small number of titles that make publishing any other title viable.