“I must also add unless a book is very popular, it never enriches the author. Also, three or four thousand copies sold is a good sale.”

Quoted in Resa Dudovitz’s excellent 1990 The Myth of Superwoman : Women’s Bestsellers in France and the United States, the best study on the economic aspects of publishing since my reading of Robert Darnton’s work. Her chapter on the bestseller is recommended.

See: “Money in Literature” (1880) – Emile Zola