Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
You are being orthogonal.
My point was, it is very difficult for any indie writer to compete directly with a Collective, whether that collective is Clancy or Patterson.
It is also difficult for an indie to directly compete with J.K. Rowling. Or John Grisham. Or the Bible.
But, critically, neither can John Scalzi. Or most tradpubbed authors.
Yet apparently your takeaway was "Hugh Howey is the/a top-selling indie author". (And to dismissively claim "though a million probably isn't correct. How many authors publish books with traditional publishers in a year. It's got to be far less than 100,000". Clearly you have never heard of a specific very famous figure of speech. Or else you are raising nitpicking to... well, actually, your usual high. Why am I continually surprised?)
I have no idea if he is, all I know that he is: - popular
- respected
- makes a lot of money
- publicly opinionated on the matter of self-publishing
- respected for that too
On the matter of top sellers, the obvious choices are a handful of thrillers and cheap "romance" that make up their numbers from the vast majority of book buyers who read a book a year and have a gravitational attraction to total dreck (the trad- AND self-pubbed kind).
Witness how 50 Shades was and still is a bestseller.  And yes, I did just lump Patterson and Grisham in the same category.
Otherwise-known-as: Why eschwartz Is Depressed With The Human Race.
Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now.  |
He's the one people point to, if there is someone better for comparison sake, then I'm all ears. Few authors are willing to share the details of their financial life with the public, that's why Scalzi's information is so interesting. It provides a snapshot of hard data when one is peering into the murky world of author revenue and book sales.
Several people in this thread seem to have hurled themselves at the conclusion that I am anti indie, apparently because if one isn't all in for indies, one must be opposed. I'm not anti-indie. There are several indie and former indie authors that I read. Some of my favorite authors go with the hybrid method (some books traditional, some indie). Given how hard it is to make a living at being an author, whatever works is fine by me. What I object to is the process of shifting through all the indie authors trying to find ones that I like. I don't have the time or patience for it. Other people seem to love doing it. My sister is very fond of fanfic. More power to them, if that's what they like. Sturgeon's law (90% of anything is crap) applies just as much to indies, fanfic and regular authors trying to find a publisher.