I was just emailing back and forth with a friend and we came to an interesting conclusion. She and I have both sold our stuff professionally. We both consider small publishing and fan fiction writing potentially as "serious" as pro. (We all know the lesson of Emily Dickinson, et al)

The average fiction print run for low-readership authors (i.e. nearly all of us) is 5,000. The average sell-through rate is well short of that number, which means most first-time authors aren't going to sell a second book via contract (in other words, nearly all of us). The average novel (including all of Stephen King's, et al) resells 2.5 times (don't ask me how they figure this stuff). Ergo, over the lifetime of the book (several years -- the publishing window where it's shelfable is 3-4 months), using rough statistics, the average general novel will be read 1.5 times. That means, over five years years, we're going to be read by (if we're lucky) around 5000 sets of eyes.

The average fan story on Fan Fiction Net receives a lot more "reads" than that a ... .

Warning ... this is adult content, but if you're not suitably adult, you shouldn't be reading my blog. lol

( I'm Fucking Ben Affleck )

Um, it's the name of the song ... obviously, I ain't.