I talked elsewhere about Louis Masterson - the Morgan Kane series sold 20m+ copies in his lifetime, but each individual edition of each book sold mostly on the order of thousands over multiple printings over a period of decades.
Low selling authors have been a big thing since always, because there are a huge number of markets that are small enough that it was (and is) not unusual for publishers in smaller markets to print on the order of a few hundred books per run for unknown authors.
E.g. in Norway (where Kjell Hallbing/Louis Masterson is from), 10k sold used to mean you were a big deal, and high up on the bestseller lists.
Low selling authors have been a big thing since always, because there are a huge number of markets that are small enough that it was (and is) not unusual for publishers in smaller markets to print on the order of a few hundred books per run for unknown authors.
E.g. in Norway (where Kjell Hallbing/Louis Masterson is from), 10k sold used to mean you were a big deal, and high up on the bestseller lists.
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