> "Writers win the Pulitzer Prize and sell just [a] few hundred copies."

For anyone else who was intrigued by this statement: The essay links to another Medium essay[0] which links to a book critic's blog[1] which links to a 2014 article from Publisher's Weekly[2]. That article reports, e.g., that in the week after winning the Pulitzer for general nonfiction, "Tom's River by Dan Fagin, went from 10 copies to 162 copies sold (6,266 copies sold to date) on BookScan." The poetry winner that year had sold 353 copies at the time the article was published. It came out about six months earlier.

So perhaps for some poetry books, an author could win a Pulitzer and "sell just a few hundred copies." But that seems like it would be rare.

Anyway, these aren't great numbers, but maybe not as abysmal as the author makes it sound.

[0] https://aaronschnoor.medium.com/does-winning-a-pulitzer-priz...

[1] https://malwarwickonbooks.com/how-much-is-a-pulitzer-prize-w...

[2] https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/a...