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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43957
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43957
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Do you wish to sell the book?

Happy endings outsell unhappy endings about 10 to 1. This has actually been studied to some extent, and the difference comes down to word-of-mouth: Even if people say they liked a book with an unhappy ending, they are much more reluctant to recommend it to friends, out of fear their friends won't like a downer ending.

Unhappy endings, like the one you describe, make the hero the reader has been identifying with feel like a fool and a stupid loser to not have realized the truth. Which is alienating to the reader, almost an insult. They read to **identify** with the hero as an escape from a life where nearly none of us are actual heroes, and an unhappy ending ruins the whole fantasy.

Agents know this, publishers know this, and they are less likely to represent or buy a book because of it. It means the book is much more unlikely to "go viral" with enthusiastic reviews, fans or celebrities recommending it, etc. All of that is free advertising they want and seek and try to encourage. Unhappy endings poison that well, and the sales studies prove it.

I am sure some geniuses have written best-sellers with unhappy endings, but those don't prove the _averages_ wrong. In plays tragedies were once common. But that was in a very different social culture, and in the modern culture, most films and movies have happy endings, or at worst, consequences but net positive endings; i.e. evil was defeated but at a heavy price.

I'd go with the happy ending.

Original score: 6