ThomasLitchford

Wallace Stegner tells it like it is:

It is no trouble to tell you that you indeed are good, much too good to remain unpublished. Because publishers are mainly literate and intelligent, most of them are sure to see the quality in your novel, and one of them is sure to publish it. But that is as far as I can honestly go in reassurance, for I suspect he will publish it with little expectation of its making much money, either for him or for you.

…

Your initial royalty statement, at an optimistic guess, will indicate that your publisher by hard work built up an advance sale of 2700 copies. Your next one, six months later, will probably carry the news that 432 of those copies came back and that altogether you fell just a little short of earning the thousand dollar advance that you spent eight or nine months ago.

This essay is from the November 1959 issue of the Atlantic. I don’t know to whom he’s addressing this essay, but the advice is applicable to any “serious” writer. (By “serious” I mean any writer more concerned with the artistic value of his writing than the commercial value.)