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:
Mike’s a smart guy but he really, really, really doesn’t understand the world of self-publishing and what’s going on there.
Mike looks at indieworld from the viewpoint of traditional publishing, but traditional publishing is getting it all wrong. Over and over. Publishers believe that because they sign an indie success to a traditional publishing contract, that means traditional publishing has won and it can capture successful self-published authors at will.
The publishing establishment doesn’t understand that a lot of indie authors regard a traditional contract as a marketing play to build their author brand. They also don’t understand that a lot of hybrid authors become convinced pretty quickly that the traditional side of their hybrid career sucks and they’re not going to maintain the traditional side any longer than they have to under their contracts.
Publishing is still focused on sales of paper books because that’s where they’re still a gatekeeper. Publishing prices ebooks wrong and thinks the profit margins are great but its pricing mistakes keep the gross way, way down. And, of course, traditional publishing contracts really underpay the author.
Self-publishing is primarily an ebook play. As Hugh has demonstrated in the post below this one, the 70% of the market that publishers commonly cite for print market share doesn’t do the authors much good. Most of that 70% goes to bookstores and publishers, not authors.
But, of course, Big Publishing doesn’t ever view the world from the author’s perspective. That’s why they have such difficulty understanding why so many authors are so happy with indieworld. And what they don’t understand, they deny.
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The Passive Voice site has a reputation that the comments (and snark) are often better than the linked articles. No surprise given how many established writers (Indies and hybrids) are regulars.
Now to wait for the Inevitable Konrath line by line fisking of Shatzkin. It is going to get real ugly real fast.