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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
This whole kerfuffle has gotten silly. Silly internet kerfuffles are a dime a dozen.
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It became silly the moment Howey put to paper (or computer) that his data was given to him by an anonymous source.
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I do find it ironic, though, that the bulk of Shatzkin's "refutation" (quotation marks used only to stay in the spirit of his writing technique) of Howey's public analysis of scraped public data lies firmly ensconced behind a paywall.
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What paywall was that? Is there more than what I read on Shatzkin's idealog.com blog?
Another silly part is that Shatzkin's actual conclusions aren't radically different from those of Howey, who over and over says his data is for genre books only.
Shatzkin:
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So my advice about Hugh Howey’s advice is simple. Totally ignore it if you’re not a genre fiction author; there’s precious little evidence or thinking in it that applies to you. And if you are a genre author, be very clear about the extra work and extra risk you take on in order to get some extra margin. Both will be required for sure whether the extra margin materializes or not.
Self-publishing is definitely an incredible boon to commercial writers and they should all understand how it works.
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Originally Posted by gmw
The report presents actual data to support what has, in the past, only been given as anecdotal evidence.
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It does come down to the research standards you want to apply. If Howey presented his findings here, in a series of posts, I'd say he was a terrific poster (especially if he left out the bit on the anonymous author/programmer). But if the same stuff was published in a peer reviewed venue (say, the
Journal of Marketing), I'd say it was a scientific scandal.
Weak science is only the slightest bit better than no science.