Book publishing—like many commercial industries—is inherently a gamble. You can pick your favorite spec manuscripts, think the author behind it is brilliant, spend gobs of money on marketing, and still your latest offering can bomb.
Unknown debuts can turn into unexpected blockbusters overnight, and seasoned hitmakers can produce a surprising dud mid-career. Every green-lit project has an air of risk, expectation, and mystery surrounding it.
Take Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Now considered one of the greatest novels ever written, the book initially received mixed reviews only to fall into obscurity by the end of Melville’s life.
If you have any doubts about this, just read the New York Times’ 1891 obituary of the writer, which is any moderately successful person’s nightmare of a eulogy.
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