Business analysts say that small publishers are sometimes a better business than the big publishing houses. “If these companies are publishing for the professional or children’s book market, they don’t need one big hit a year. They might publish hundreds of books that sell 10,000 copies each, and that’s fine. They can make a profit because the books tend to be pricier than other kinds of books and because, particularly with universities and other professional markets, institutions have to buy large numbers of these books, whether they want to or not.”