WHY

Why are so many of the big publishing outfits so secretive about sales figures for books? Indie writers in particular will know exactly what I am talking about here.
The moment an author dares to mention the word royalties he invariably meets with the following response. "Yes of course we list all your books and we put them into every major bookstore in not only your own country but every other country in the world as you can see in any Google or other major search engine. There they all are all 26 publication of yours to date. Right next to your name. That`s what we said we would do and that`s exactly what we`ve done.
Sorry. Did you say sales figures? Royalties? I`ve kind of lost you there. What are they and how are they relevant to what we were just explaining to you? You are what? The author? Oh that explains it all then. We don`t talk directly to authors under any set of circumstances.
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