02-13-2014, 05:42 PM | #46 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,732
Karma: 128354696
Join Date: May 2009
Location: 26 kly from Sgr A*
Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000
|
It took a while, but the establishment figured out how to deal with Howey's data: wave the data away and attack Howey personally.
http://www.idealog.com/blog/comparin...tzkin+Files%29 Prep the popcorn, the war is on. Edit: Yup. It's war alright. http://www.thepassivevoice.com/02/20...not-available/ Quote:
Now to wait for the Inevitable Konrath line by line fisking of Shatzkin. It is going to get real ugly real fast. Last edited by fjtorres; 02-13-2014 at 05:53 PM. |
|
02-13-2014, 05:53 PM | #47 | |
eReader
Posts: 2,750
Karma: 4968470
Join Date: Aug 2007
Device: Note 5; PW3; Nook HD+; ChuWi Hi12; iPad
|
Quote:
I want self-publishing to do well; I'm a self-published author. I just want much better data than we're getting, and most of all I want data that's not skewed towards either side. I'm also not hung up on terms like success or failure. As you point out $3-4,000 a year or 1500-2000 sales, however you want to put it, is much better than nothing. Nobody's arguing that. However, the important question the study is missing is where on the overall spectrum does that lie? Let me put some commercial numbers back to you... purely as a thought experiment. Let's say that 10% of all manuscripts find an agent, and those agents sell half of what they get. Further, let's posit that each such book earns a minimum advance of $5,000 of which the author gets $4,250 and that's all the money they see from that book. We'll further assume that the author is producing 1 book a year. So in this scenario, the top 5% of manuscripts submitted to commercial publishers generate a minimum of $4,250 for the author over a 1 year term. Now the question that comes to my mind is what proportion of self-published authors earn $4,250 from either a single work, or all their works over the course of a 1 year term? What proportion earn $1,000, or even $100? If it turns out that 10% of all self-published authors make at least $4,250 per year, then it's clearly a better financial decision, particularly if it's from one book. It's a little harder to compare if the self-published author has multiple works out there, because of the amount of work involved, but even so, this is a win for self-published. On the other hand, if it turns out that only the top 2% of self-published authors make $4,250 and everyone below the top 5% makes less than $100, then I'd argue that it would be a win for commercial publication. Unfortunately, there's a problem. Nobody has the numbers. That's the elephant in the room that everyone's dancing around. The numbers just aren't there, and without them it's impossible to draw truly meaningful conclusions. We can see the benefits of both choices, we can weigh them against our own interests, desires, and situation, but we can't make concrete statements, particularly regarding self-publishing without numbers that just don't exist. |
|
Advert | |
|
02-13-2014, 07:00 PM | #48 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 7,149
Karma: 39600000
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: near Philadelphia USA
Device: Kindle Kids Edition, Fire HD 10 (11th generation)
|
Quote:
While I basically agree with Shatzkin, his post is has some strange twists. After making largely sound criticisms of Howey's research methodology, Shatzkin conceeds that Hovey is probably right about genre novels. And all that Howey was writing about is genre novels. P.S. You essentially called Shatzkin "establishment." As personal attacks go, that's pretty mild. It would be hard to write provocative posts if you couldn't group a public figure with our dreaded "establishment." So I'm not criticizing you for a personal attack, but suggesting that Shatzkin be given the same slack we should give you. Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 02-13-2014 at 07:07 PM. |
|
02-13-2014, 09:58 PM | #49 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,531
Karma: 8059866
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Canada
Device: Kobo H2O / Aura HD / Glo / iPad3
|
Quote:
So Shatzkin is claiming both that the indie numbers are inflated by all the traditionally published authors going indie, and that the trend is for indie authors to go traditional. I guess he couldn't decide which herring to throw in the barrel. |
|
02-13-2014, 10:41 PM | #50 |
eReader
Posts: 2,750
Karma: 4968470
Join Date: Aug 2007
Device: Note 5; PW3; Nook HD+; ChuWi Hi12; iPad
|
I do think hybrid authors are an important part of the mix, and shouldn't be discounted the way they are by any "either-or" studies. In my opinion, the group that can most easily benefit from a hybrid approach are those who've built an audience through commercial publication, and then go for self-publishing.
|
Advert | |
|
02-14-2014, 12:33 AM | #51 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,531
Karma: 8059866
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Canada
Device: Kobo H2O / Aura HD / Glo / iPad3
|
I agreed with most of what Shatzkin said, I just thought it was funny that one of his arguments could be taken that traditionally published authors should go indie. The hybrid approach would be the best option right now except the publishers are trying to lock authors into long term commitments including non compete clauses which kills that as an option. The publishers are forcing an either or decision and this new data is showing that a long term commitment to the traditional route is probably not wise. Something needs to change.
The points that Hugh is making are what I would expect the head of the Author's Guild to be taking. |
02-14-2014, 12:54 AM | #52 | |
cacoethes scribendi
Posts: 5,812
Karma: 137770742
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Australia
Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650
|
Quote:
If you were to try and take the complete picture of sales, not just the top, and attempted to make similar comparisons you would no longer be comparing apples with apples. You would be comparing (excuse me mixing my metaphors here) only the cream of traditional publishing (what made it past the agents auto-rejection, and what made it up out of the publisher slush piles), with the entire vat full of milk from independent publishing. By taking a look at only the top of the pyramid the report lets us see what success looks like in either form. It tells us nothing about how that success was achieved, or how likely it is. It does tell us, in clearer terms than I've seen before, that independent publishing forms a big part of the top of the pyramid. It doesn't mean that it's easier to get there than it was, which ever path you take, but it does show that choosing independent publishing will not exclude you from the top, and offers strong suggestion that it may mean a better result, financially, if you ever do make it that far. The other thing that I like about the report is that it seems to show that the public slush pile system is working - after a fashion. Which is not to say there aren't still good books buried down in the slush somewhere, but that is as true of the public slush pile as it is of the hidden traditional publisher slush piles. The difference being that ones in the public pile have a chance, however slim, of eventually being recognised. |
|
02-14-2014, 10:00 AM | #53 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,732
Karma: 128354696
Join Date: May 2009
Location: 26 kly from Sgr A*
Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000
|
Quote:
And that is the dirty secret the traditionalists want to obscure: more and more veterans with print catalogs are supplementing their print income with indie releases and finding they make more money off the indie releases. There are say more tradpub authors going hybrid or, if they can get their rights reverted, full indie, than indie authors going hybrid of full trad. Another often neglected fact is that since more tradpubs won't release more than one or two titles a year per author, prolific trad authors need pen names or contracts with multiple authors. The modern answer is to indie-pub on the side. Which is why so many trad-pub contracts now have non-compete clauses. Which, of course, drives more authors to go all-indie. |
|
02-14-2014, 12:32 PM | #54 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,732
Karma: 128354696
Join Date: May 2009
Location: 26 kly from Sgr A*
Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000
|
As expected, Konrath takes Shatzkin on, point by point:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2014/0...-shatzkin.html Sample: Quote:
|
|
02-15-2014, 09:42 AM | #55 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,531
Karma: 8059866
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Canada
Device: Kobo H2O / Aura HD / Glo / iPad3
|
I don't have a turtle in this race and I'm not a statistician but I do understand the dangers of extrapolating from a days worth of data. It's not a large enough sample and I don't think Hugh should have published the conclusions that he did. I do understand the void of data that indie authors are working from though so there is a lot of excitement over having real data. In the spirt of this I'll extrapolate my own inaccurate conclusions.
What did jump out at me were the pie charts that show that (on that particular day) Amazon was able to take the Amazon published 4% of the titles to 15% of the daily unit sales. I knew that Amazon's targeted marketing was a real advantage but if that's typical it's huge. On the same day the big publishing houses (BPH) were only able to take 28% of the titles to 34% of the unit sales, this despite their traditional advantage of author brand recognition. In comparison the single/small/medium publishers (Amazon Publishing primary competition) had a combined 33% of the titles but were only able to generate 8% of the unit sales. It makes me wonder if Amazon really has that much power to direct sales where they want. If so it's not smart to make an enemy of them when you're trying to sell books. This got me thinking about the "slowdown in ebook sales". It's been recognized that the data isn't complete because it excludes Amazon's proprietary data and indie sales (assumed to be insignificant). Hugh's data shows (on this particular day) that Amazon was able to take 35% of the titles to 39% of the sales which is hardly insignificant. It's more unit sales then the BPH. I bet that made the BPH sphincters contract. Over the last 4 years the BPH have taken every possible opportunity to pick a fight with Amazon but at the end of the day it was recognized that the agency pricing was good for Amazon, they were collecting a guaranteed 30% off of higher priced books so it made good business sense to direct customers to those offerings. When agency pricing ended the 30% went away and it's no longer in Amazon's business interest to direct customer's to the lower margin sales. Why not direct sales to indie offerings at a higher margin and decrease your reliance on the self declared enemies. At the same time reports start coming in that BPH ebook sales growth is slowing. Is it possible that ebook growth has been continuing to grow? More data will be interesting. I wonder if Amazon will cut off the data feed that Hugh has been using. |
02-15-2014, 09:52 AM | #56 |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 5,700
Karma: 66666666
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Australia
Device: Kobo Libra 2, iPadMini4, iPad4, MBP; support other Kobo/Kindles
|
|
02-15-2014, 11:21 AM | #57 | |
Guru
Posts: 861
Karma: 3543721
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Estonia
Device: Kindle Paperwhite, iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
|
Quote:
GR star rating hints are guidelines, not rules; GR staff have said repeatedly that readers are allowed to use whatever rating system or reasoning they prefer - indeed, there are users who rate books they loved with one star, because for them, 1 = the best. That's largely because GR is primarily a cataloguing and social reading / interaction place, not a bookseller - personal cataloguing is one of the primary functions of the site for many users, who catalogue books they have read or want to read and assign star ratings that have some kind of personal meaning for them (and have no desire to write reviews or interact with anyone else). All this doesn't make GR star ratings pointless, but it does mean that if one is just looking for "well-rated" books to read, they shouldn't just go by the GR average ratings but check out any actual reviews or take a quick look at the top reviews. For pre-release books, it's very easy to immediately tell which ratings with reviews are from people who've actually read the book, and which ratings/comments are from those who are anticipating the book with great excitement (or have it one-starred for personal purposes of "won't ever read this" or similar). It's a system that fits me just fine, but I don't really ever pay attention to average ratings anywhere anyway - if it's a book that looks potentially interesting, I'll first check if my friends / people whose tastes I'm more familiar with have read/rated/reviewed it and then take a look at a handful of top-voted reviews, good and bad, to get a better idea of whether I might like it or not. |
|
02-15-2014, 03:09 PM | #58 | ||
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 7,149
Karma: 39600000
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: near Philadelphia USA
Device: Kindle Kids Edition, Fire HD 10 (11th generation)
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
02-15-2014, 03:25 PM | #59 |
eBook Enthusiast
Posts: 85,544
Karma: 93383043
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6
|
If the validity of the data underlying the study cannot be verified, as a scientist that raises a huge question mark over the validity of the conclusions, because no independent verification can be done. The requirement that a study should be reproducible lies at the very heart of the scientific method.
|
02-15-2014, 03:43 PM | #60 | |
Wizard
Posts: 3,418
Karma: 35207650
Join Date: Jun 2011
Device: iPad
|
Quote:
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Sand by Hugh Howey | drofgnal | Reading Recommendations | 10 | 01-20-2014 06:03 AM |
Third Shift - Hugh Howey (Daily Deal) | jhempel24 | Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links) | 0 | 04-06-2013 05:47 AM |
Free: Wool (Part 1) by Hugh Howey | slex | Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links) | 29 | 12-31-2012 01:02 PM |
Who has read the Hugh Howey zombie books? Or just one book? | NickyWithNook | Reading Recommendations | 12 | 10-17-2012 07:27 PM |
I, Zombie by Hugh Howey, Pre-Orders available | alansplace | Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links) | 0 | 07-27-2012 09:17 PM |