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This was on the News subforum as well, and I thought that in some respects it fitted better here. There is certainly a lot in that report, and a lot of surprises. It is interesting that someone has found a way to analyse Amazon sales without having to get access to the actual sales data (it is a very good example, from a computer security point of view, of how much information can be garnered from systems by analysis of metadata).
There is a lot in there to offer encouragement for independent publishers. I also like that it appears to demonstrate that the public slush pile system is working - independently published works are finding their way to top in a volume big enough to prove that it's not just outliers. None of which says it is any easier for an author to reach that range, but when you add this to the many recent articles about the woes of traditionally published authors, the advantages of independent publishing become very convincing.
You have to suppose that the big name publishers already know all this, they've had access to a big enough portion of the sales data that the numbers are unlikely to surprise them. I wonder if any of them have any plans to do anything about it? Perhaps the big publishers will morph into high profile PR agencies for names big enough to afford them (which, it seems to me, is close to what they've become already).
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