Want to Bankrupt Someone? Help Them Start a Magazine. Want Them Poor? Crown Them a Writer

A book editor once approached me with an invitation to write a book. It wasn’t the kind of bestselling fiction that stays on shelves for decades (I certainly harbor no illusions about possessing that caliber of literary genius), but rather a time-sensitive, technical industry handbook.

Yet, after calculating standard initial print runs and conventional royalty percentages, I quickly realized the fate awaiting such titles: their shelf life inevitably evaporates the moment the underlying tech hype cools down. Coupled with an inherently niche target audience, spending months drafting, structuring, and endlessly revising manuscript proofs yields a financial return that is frankly negligible.

If publishing a physical book is purely about seeking self-affirmation and wearing an author’s vanity halo, then by all means—start writing immediately! But if you find yourself torn between romance and putting bread on the table, receiving that miserably thin royalty check at the end of the quarter will likely leave you with nothing but regret.

I seized the opportunity during our conversation to ask the editor a question that had lingered in my mind for years. Whenever I browse bookstore portals like Books.com.tw via TenChoice and encounter labels like “Out of Print” or “Sold Out,” I cannot help but wonder: How many genuinely worthy books vanish like smoke into the commercial ether simply because their immediate sales fell short? Once gone, readers cannot purchase them anywhere, and one would be hard-pressed to locate even a handful of copies across public libraries.

There is no satisfying answer. In today’s book market, seeing a title go into a second print run is already considered a triumph. Niche subjects that lack institutional backing or celebrity endorsements rarely justify the cost of local production; publishers find it far more cost-effective to license translations wholesale from mainland publishers or overseas houses, where output and quality have steadily risen.

The great irony is that while everyone laments the perpetual winter of traditional publishing, bookstores and warehouses still overflow with truckloads of forgettable titles every season—half of which were probably squeezed out of amateur writers by pressured commissioning editors.

No wonder older veterans of the industry always quip: “If you want to bankrupt someone, help them launch a magazine; if you want to keep them poor forever, crown them a writer!”

Naturally, there are exceptions. If I ever manage to produce a novel or literary piece that genuinely satisfies my own critical eye—perhaps like the contemplative verses on POETOR—maybe I will be the one clutching a manuscript, knocking on every publishing house door, begging editors young and old to grant me an imprint. (Gazes wistfully into the distance).