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Old 02-18-2014, 07:46 PM   #91
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What paywall was that? Is there more than what I read on Shatzkin's idealog.com blog?
My bad. The whole kerfuffle must've had me ruffled. Rather than Konrath's response to Shatzkin's points, I was thinking of Konrath's response to Michael Cade's two-part "The Truth about eBook Sales" on PublishersLunch. The second part of which is behind the paywall.
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Old 02-18-2014, 08:08 PM   #92
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Whatever the accuracy of the numbers, a lot of people have gotten awfully defensive now that the "volcano of crap" meme has vaporized.
But the Volcano hasn't gone away just because Howey didn't consider it in his report. Self published books still run the gamut from the excellent to the execrable. Good ones that get noticed get sales, others don't.

The garbage is still there, it hasn't gone away. It's very good to know that good books can escape the volcano in significant numbers, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

The best thing about today's self-publishing world is in fact that there is room for everything. Good, bad, experimental, anything a person writes can be published and potentially find an audience.

Yes, the good stuff's there, and in quantity, but the bad stuff is too. It just isn't selling.
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Old 02-19-2014, 10:56 AM   #93
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MikeB1972 has already addressed the use of "stellar," but I would also like to draw your attention to the word manuscript, which has a generally accepted meaning of an as-yet unpublished book. You can't determine sales before a book's been published.

The entire passage talks about the decisions authors need to make before choosing between self-publishing and commercial publication. There are definitely books and authors for whom self-publishing is a better option, just as there are others for whom commercial publishing is a better option. Howey's figures don't back up his statements.
If you read the full context around "stellar manuscript" you get to see what he's actually saying, instead of trying to read in things he's not. Immediately before the "stellar manuscript" bit he says:
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The third and final possibility is that the manuscript in question is great. [...] We all like to think our manuscript is one of these. And from this hubris comes a fatal decision not to self-publish.
It seems obvious to me, but apparently I'm wrong, that what he's saying is that if you think your manuscript might be (all the things he says in that paragraph) then the figures suggest that you will still be better off self-publishing.

There's nothing there to suggest that self-publishing will make your manuscript all these things, there's nothing there to suggest that the figures offer any way to predict manuscripts that will be all these things. There is only the suggestion that if it does turn out to be a stellar performer then self-publishing still gives a better financial result. I am really not sure where and how you are reading anything else from the text - because in context the meaning seems pretty clear to me.
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Old 02-19-2014, 11:08 AM   #94
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If you read the full context around "stellar manuscript" you get to see what he's actually saying, instead of trying to read in things he's not. Immediately before the "stellar manuscript" bit he says:


It seems obvious to me, but apparently I'm wrong, that what he's saying is that if you think your manuscript might be (all the things he says in that paragraph) then the figures suggest that you will still be better off self-publishing.

There's nothing there to suggest that self-publishing will make your manuscript all these things, there's nothing there to suggest that the figures offer any way to predict manuscripts that will be all these things. There is only the suggestion that if it does turn out to be a stellar performer then self-publishing still gives a better financial result. I am really not sure where and how you are reading anything else from the text - because in context the meaning seems pretty clear to me.
No, you are not wrong. That is exactly what he is saying.

That's the root of the problem.

He says the figures suggest that, but they don't. The figures show that if you achieve a certain sales volume on Kindle, you will make more money in royalties by self-publishing than through a commercial publisher. Unfortunately, that achievement depends on more factors than the quality of the manuscript alone.

We're both getting the same meaning from the words. The real disagreement is in what the numbers mean, not the words.
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Old 02-19-2014, 06:29 PM   #95
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Expanded report is up... 54,000 titles this time...

http://authorearnings.com/reports/the-50k-report/

Server will probably melt under load as this news gets out... so good luck.
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Old 02-19-2014, 06:58 PM   #96
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Thanks, got it loaded.

First glance, I haven't dug through it in detail, but It's good to see that his summary this time is limited to information that can be extracted from the data. I don't know that I'm entirely convinced of all his extrapolations of unit and dollar share, but I do think his numbers are good enough to justify the argument that self-published books make up a major portion of Kindle market share at the very least.
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Old 02-19-2014, 07:39 PM   #97
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No, you are not wrong. That is exactly what he is saying.

That's the root of the problem.

He says the figures suggest that, but they don't. The figures show that if you achieve a certain sales volume on Kindle, you will make more money in royalties by self-publishing than through a commercial publisher. Unfortunately, that achievement depends on more factors than the quality of the manuscript alone.

We're both getting the same meaning from the words. The real disagreement is in what the numbers mean, not the words.
My turn to do the bolding. Yep, that's what the figures say, and that is what the report says. And the figures in the report form part of the context for the phrase "stellar manuscript". We saw that "stellar" has multiple definitions, and I'm happy to accept that some may use it for "very good", but it is commonly associated with performance rather than quality (when we see a movie has are "stellar cast" we don't automatically assume these a high quality actors, we assume they're ones that help to sell lots of movies), which is the variation that make sense in this context.
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Old 02-19-2014, 07:43 PM   #98
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And the numbers still don't justify his assertions. It's that simple.

His numbers say one thing, his words say another, and that's the problem.
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Old 02-19-2014, 07:59 PM   #99
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But surely that's only true if you insist that "stellar" has to mean "high quality" rather than it's commonly understood association with performance. If you read his paragraphs about "isnt' good", "merely average" and "great" work as simply being about an author's expectations when planning to publish (which is what makes sense in the context of this report, you can only choose your publishing path from your expectations or hope for a manuscript), then the words do correspond to the numbers - in fact the numbers led directly to these words when you accept them in the context of the report.
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Old 02-19-2014, 08:36 PM   #100
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The next report is going to be juicy: their spider has been crawling Nook.
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Old 02-20-2014, 12:42 PM   #101
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What I think is really interesting is the low number of authors making a living at their books. That shows the problem of making a decent living solely through writing still hasn't changed.
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Old 02-20-2014, 03:01 PM   #102
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What I think is really interesting is the low number of authors making a living at their books. That shows the problem of making a decent living solely through writing still hasn't changed.
There's a reason the motto of the "professional" writer is "Don't give up the day job."

Nowadays, though, the odds are getting better...
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Old 02-20-2014, 03:13 PM   #103
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Todays chapter of AS THE PUBLISHING WORLD CHURNS comes courtesy of Publisher's Weekly and Mark Coker:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...or-revolt.html

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The critics of Howey’s data and methodology are missing the point. The thrust of Howey’s conclusions is that indie authors are taking e-book market share from traditional publishers. Whether the indie percentage today is 10% or 50% of the overall e-book market or a particular genre doesn’t matter. It’s not worth arguing. What matters is the directional trend, and the strong social, cultural and economic forces that will propel the trend forward in a direction unfavorable to publishers.

The indie author insurrection has become a revolution that will strip publishers of power they once took for granted.

By every measure of great historical or contemporary revolutions, the indie author revolution is real and gaining strength every day. At the heart of every revolution is growing disparity between haves and have-nots, abuse of power, and the innate human desire for greater self-determination, freedom, fairness and respect.

Authors are losing faith in Big Publishing. Authors are angry. The moderates of the Martin Luther vein are calling for reform. The extremists of the Richard Dawkins variety are calling for the abolition of Big Publishing as we know it.

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The author community is growing increasingly disenchanted by Big Publishing’s hard line on 25% net e-book royalties, high e-book prices, slow payouts, and insistence on DRM copy protection. The recent news of major publishers touting record e-book-powered earnings only adds insult to authors’ perceived injury.

Authors are also disappointed by Big Publishing’s misguided foray into vanity publishing with Pearson/Penguin’s 2012 acquisition of Author Solutions, a company known for selling over-priced publishing packages to unsuspecting writers. Multiple publishers have formed sock puppet imprints powered by ASI: Simon & Schuster’s Archway, Penguin Random House’s Partridge Publishing in India, HarperCollins’ Westbow, Hay House’s Balboa Press, Writer’s Digests’ Abbott Press, and Harlequin’s Dellarte Press. These deals with the devil confirmed the worst fears held by indie authors who already questioned if publishers viewed writers as partners or as chattel.
Bolded highlight mine.

As a reader, my sympathies (and interests) line up with the rebels.

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Old 02-20-2014, 04:29 PM   #104
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The problem with using "volcano of crap" to describe self-published books is that it is really hard to avoid the bad stuff that spews from a volcano, while it is quite easy to avoid the bad stuff that comes from self-published books. If Mount Vesuvius spewed forth some diamonds in addition to all that ash, it would be a monumental task to find those diamonds. If I had to randomly search through self-published to find the good ones, it would indeed be analogous to a volcano.

But I don't search for books randomly. The same techniques that I use to select traditionally published books work for selecting self-published books work: word of mouth, reviews, etc. If you never notice the ash and lava, is there really a volcano?
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Old 02-20-2014, 04:46 PM   #105
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If you never notice the ash and lava, is there really a volcano?
Could be a hellmouth. Is there a sulfur smell?

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