By the Numbers

By today’s standards, the class of spring ’77 is remarkably un-diverse. Men are heavily in the majority. As far as we can tell, all the authors are white. No minorities are represented, with the exception that at least 2 of 37 are Jews.
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These are the occupations of authors, not before they became authors, but during their literary careers. As you can see from the career profiles, even the most prolific novelists worked at least part-time. Just about everyone chose a career that had something to do with writing.
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A degree doesn’t actually count for much in persuading publishers to accept your novel, but this group is a rather well-educated one, with many letters after their names. A solid majority have Master’s degrees.
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They published their first novels at ages from 25 to 56, with a bunching-up around age 40. We had age date for 32 of the 37.
NO CHART YET

This rather frightening chart shows how few authors managed to publish a lot of novels. Or even get into double-digits.  The shape of this curve, not coincidentally, is the kind that gave Chris Jackson the idea for his book on marketing “The Long Tail.”
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This shows just how quickly publishers dropped authors.
SUCCESSIVE BOOKS W. SAME PUB