[vidarh]

What stops authors doing that is that most authors struggle to sell 50 copies at far lower price point no matter how much effort they put in because most books just aren't interesting enough to enough people to be easy enough to sell without it turning into gruntwork paying far below minimum wage.

Congratulations, you're a massive success as an author, having sold more than most authors will. That's amazing.

But consider that most authors have no interests in writing business / self help books, and most who do still fail spectacularly because having success with those kinds of books tends to happen primarily if you already have an audience and a track record in the field you're writing about. E.g. the perceived value of your book is 99% your story about your track record, and most would-be authors don't have that track record.

[pxue]

You nailed it.

Thank you.

So just to clarify I didn't have an audience when I wrote the book. I took the time and told people my story over the past 6 months, and while I did that - sold books.

I think good storytellers should be able to build an audience regardless of the format - highly recommend any aspiring author to try it.

[vidarh]

The thing is, most storytellers don't have nearly as compelling a value proposition. E.g. the best value a fiction writer can provide is a good story. Your value proposition is selling at least the hope of learning ways of bringing in money. It doesn't need to have a very high chance of success before it's perceived net present value is higher than the cost of your book, while fiction writers are competing with enormous amount of free or already paid for entertainment and fiction from a writer you don't know is often seen as having a sufficiently high risk of being a waste of time that the perceived risk adjusted value for a lot of people is negative.

Getting people to take unknown fiction even for free is an uphill battle.