Shira Ross has an article in the New York Times, called "The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller." Her conclusion is that so far nobody has solved this particular mystery, but she exposes some interesting facts:
* Publishing is not a very profitable business. Publishers do very little market research and seem resigned to the notion that it's impossible to predict which books will do well and which will fail.
* The advance payment to the author often is an estimate of the first year's royalties (ten to fifteen percent of the anticipated gross sales).
* The publishers make much of their slim profit margin on surprise best-sellers (not on the obvious best-sellers by big names, because these cost so much to acquire). One example: "The Nanny Diaries," which sold for an advance of $25,000 and sold more than four million copies.
* Betting big on a previously-successful author doesn't always pay off. Example: Charles Frazer's "Cold Mountain" sold 1.6 million copies in hardcover. Based on this, he got more than $8 million for his second novel, "Thirteen Moons." The publisher printed 750,000 hardcover copies. So far only 250,000 copies have sold, which means at this point the publishers are out about $7 million.