Are you one in a million?

"Each year, 6 million authors write a book and of these authors only 4% will get published."

I found that comment on the 'net and cannot verify it. If it is true, 5.76 million authors are actively seeking a publisher and 240,000 succeed. If you were to tell would-be authors that 240,000 authors will be published every year, they would think they had a good chance of becoming one of them. If you told authors that one in twenty-five would succeed, they would probably thing they had an even better chance of succeeding.

The odds of an author, who is one of six million authors seeking publication, succeeding seem far less likely.

So are you one in twenty-five, or one in five and three quarters of a million, or one in six million?

I'll probably just keep writing books. Did all those people seek publication?

I also think it is good that many people are writing books.

Carol

I am published but I have been writing since I was thirteen.

Writing is my hobby. Publication is unimportant to me.

It might be even better if more of them were reading books and short stories - especially short stories. Over at the Short Mystery Fiction Society there is an interesting discussion about the way people look over books in a bookstore or library, how many skim a book as opposed to reading every word and whether novels or short stories are more interesting.
Am I one in a million. Nah, none of us are. People come for a dime a dozen.

Shelagh wrote:

"Each year, 6 million authors write a book and of these authors only 4% will get published."

I've read similar quotes. All different figures, all making the "point" that publication is difficult.

The figures are all worthless because they assume that all those millions are equal contenders. But that's false. Most of those millions of submissions are not contenders because they bring either awful writing, a thin audience or no author credentials to the table.

Bring good writing, a large audience and credentials when appropriate to the table and there's a very good chance of publication, indeed.

Shelagh'
87.5% of all statistics are made up on the spur of the moment.
97% of those are plucked out of thin air.
94% of the above are made up by someone who knows nothing about anything.

I am 0 in billions--I ain't trying.

Pssst, between you and me Alice I cant count past five or was it four hold on ...one ...two ... three... five...

OK, you're the exception. One in a million.

I'm one in 6.784 billion.

Abe F. March wrote:

I'm one in 6.784 billion.

Thats about as high as I am on the Amazon book sales chart.

Marie, you are so kind.
I googled the number of people on earth and got that number. So you are also included in that figure.

If you google "author" you will pull up 836 million pages:

Results 1 - 10 of about 836,000,000 for author [definition]. (0.15 seconds)

To be honest, I do not mind if I get published or not. It will be a bonus, but I enjoy writing and will keep writing anyway.

I will feel a sense of achievement after writing my first novel, and really won't expect to get published.