Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
We're long past the point where anyone's denying that self-published authors can compete with commercially published authors at least in terms of Kindle success.
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They talk about how much money an author can make, but not about how likely they are to make it, but without that latter part there's no way to tell which choice is better.
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If we were past the point of denying that self-publishing can compete with traditional forms of publishing then the report wouldn't be attracting the sort of responses that it is. The report presents actual data to support what has, in the past, only been given as anecdotal evidence. It is a good start, and the responses it has attracted, on both sides, should all help expand on that start.
You keep coming back to the disappointment that the report doesn't say "how likely they are to make it", but I don't see that as a reason to criticise the report. (It would be if that was their stated objective, but it's not.) I'm not sure where you are ever going to find statistical data that tells you how likely it is that a given manuscript will be successful, let alone comparing it's likely success in different forms of publishing. Even if someone eventually extracts details of all self-published authors of the 'net, what would we compare that to? Are the big publishing houses and agents all going to put out reliable statistics of all the manuscripts they rejected? I'm not holding my breath. Without that detail from the big publishing houses, just how are you ever going to discover what you want to know?