This week, New York magazine marks the descent of book-industry tradeshow BEA on our town with "Book Hunt," a special section celebrating our city's literary culture. Or maybe celebrating our city's perpetual cutthroat, superficial search for the next lit it thing to fetishize and then discard! Same diff. Here, you can vote ("our tacky idea") on which promising young writer's pagelong excerpt is most deserving of... who knows! Something! We're partial to the one whose mom died and the Ethiopian. Still confused about whether it's fruitless and pointless to try to make it as a writer in this city? Let New York connect some dots for you.

In 'The New York Writer's Catch-22," Hunter College writing prof Peter Carey sympathizes with his starry-eyed students—" I can see the toll it takes to be a young unpublished writer in this town. How hard it is to make a living, pay the rent, have a relationship, write a book. However, New York is the great white way, the red-hot center, the blue light on the deck that draws the talent in from Great Forks, North Dakota. You come to make your name"— while he marvels at their foolhardiness: "And here is what seems most insane—young and not-so-young writers take out student loans to get M.F.A.'s in creative writing. This does not add up."

Even the established, prizewinning authors these students theoretically aspire to be have got it rough! "[Akhil Sharma, John Wray, Gary Shteyngart, Suketu Mehta, and Ray Isle] occupy an anxious middle zone. No longer desperate for approval, they still can't survive off their books (and Sharma has quit banking). Reviews and awards don't translate into sales, and the incessant touring is a grind."

Still nourishing a shred of a dream? A section entitled The Best Novels You've Never Read would like to remind you that all the critical fawning in the world still doesn't translate into money: it anoints as "winner" cult novelist David Markson while noting that his last two novels sold a cumulative 6,000 copies. Another fun aside: "Writers of the top three best sellers ten years ago this week: Mary Higgins Clark, John Grisham, and Danielle Steel."

Okay, silver lining time. "Today, when people seem to be breaking through all around you, it might be good to bear in mind that the only reward you can rely on is in the work itself," Peter Carey reminds his students. Oh, right! Writing is its own reward. However could we have forgotten?