There are plenty of jobs people do for the love of the work rather than the size of the paycheck.

Ask all the park rangers and social workers and fitness instructors, you know. But if they didn't

earn enough to at least scrape by, they'd probably have to quit. For many writers, though, the drive to keep doing

their thing is so great that they'll work knowing they might be paid almost nothing for their

labors if they can even find somebody to publish them. And yet, in the U.S. alone, an astonishing

7,400 new titles are released every

single day. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. Here's what's so strange.

Even in the era of TV and movies and social media and podcasts, an eager audience of readers is still really

excited about books. So why does the book business seem to be perpetually in flux and in peril?

And what should writers understand about how it all works and how rare it is to make a living,

let alone a fortune, in the 21st century. Michael Castleman has had significantly more success than

most authors, but he is not fabulously wealthy and he doesn't expect you to have heard of him,

despite the fact that he's published four mysteries and 15 works of nonfiction,

including the one we're talking about today, titled The Untold Story of Books,

a Writer's History of Publishing.

Michael, welcome to think.

Thanks for having me on, Chris. I really appreciate it.

I want to start by setting you up for a joke. What does it take to make a small fortune in publishing?

Start with a large one.

All right. So generally speaking, producing books is rarely an effective get

rich quick scheme. But you do think it's useful for writers and for devoted readers to understand

the book business. When you write that you found a lot of mystery and mythology surrounding the

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