From Teleread:
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/what-...rnings-report/
Quote:
Howey was very up front that these figures represented a small bite of data from a single retailer, covering basically about a single day’s worth of Amazon sales. He didn’t claim that it was in any way conclusive, or that it was the last word in terms of what authors can earn by self-publishing. He even made the complete raw data set available for download, so people could crunch the numbers in whatever ways they preferred.
There were a lot of responses (Paul covers one here). From many of them, you would think Howey had advocated cooking and eating babies. Mike Shatzkin complained about Howey’s “agenda” (immediately drawing fire from J.A. Konrath). People (such as this blogger from Dear Author) complained that the figures weren’t complete, that he was making some very iffy guesses, and basically that this apple wasn’t, in fact, an orange, when Howey had never tried to claim it was. Writer and blogger Courtney Milan expressed skepticism because she couldn’t seem to get Howey’s numbers to match up for her own books.
Passive Guy, the blogger over at The Passive Voice, has been bemused by the large number of “overwrought” responses Howey’s post has engendered. Voices speaking for the publishing industry seem to be throwing tantrums:
Indie authors just can’t, can’t, can’t be selling more ebooks anywhere on Amazon than tradpub is. Indie bestsellers just can’t, can’t, can’t be making more money that tradpub authors are. They just can’t.
The vitriol and mathematical illiteracy have flowed like half-priced beer during Happy Hour. Perhaps the greatest lesson to take away from all this is one that does not rely on the specific nuances of the numbers Howey crunched. It’s a more general realization, summed up by blogger J.W. Manus (found via the Passive Voice): no matter what the percentages are, it’s abundantly clear there are plenty of people making a go of self-publishing now, in ways that simply were not possible before e-books and especially the Kindle.
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From The Passive Voice intro to the above:
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/02/20...rnings-report/
Quote:
Passive Guy would add that publishers don’t have to lose all the good authors to self-publishing to be harmed, perhaps fatally.
Trade publishing is a narrow-margin business with high fixed overhead, primarily salaries and rent. It is also absolutely reliant on bestsellers. If a publisher manages to grab a Hunger Games or Fifty Shades, it has a great year or, with sequels and movie deals, several great years. Since the majority of books break even or lose money, those bestsellers are the difference between profit and loss.
The Author Earnings report focused on ebook bestsellers.
Big Publishing is psychically invested in the idea that indie books are those that BP could never have made money on.
If indie books aren’t bestsellers or if BP can grab the one-in-a-million indie author who somehow emerges from the primeval swamp and sells well, then the future of Big Publishing looks pretty much like the past did.
However, if the next Fifty Shades or Hunger Games starts indie and stays indie, the sun is setting on the publishing empire. The bean-counters at the big media conglomerates that own Big Publishing will send the band home and shut off the lights or, perhaps even worse, move the party to a Chuck E. Cheese in New Jersey.
The reason that Hugh and Author Earnings have generated such a hissy-fit in the publishing establishment is because they have intimated that which must not be spoken: Bestsellers ≠ Big Publishing.
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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.