Being Midlist

"A midlist author is one whose books are well received but have failed to make a commercial breakthrough; whose work sells solidly but unspectacularly, who's well known within the writing community but the majority of book buyers have never heard his name."

-- David Armstrong, "How Not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a Midlist Author," 2003

Some people say that midlist doesn't apply to genre fiction writers—that we're our own species altogether. It's true that publishers have...