Quote:
Originally Posted by haydnfan
This comparison does not work. Lock In has much broader appeal than many of Scalzi's previous novels. There are many people that read it having never read Scalzi before. Redshirts is targeting the demographic of hard core Trekkers that appreciate the send up of the red shirt trope enough to read a whole novel on it.
And yes it is anecdotal evidence, you need a large selection of books across every genre and not two dissimilar books by the same author.
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If that is the standard of data, you are never going to get it. You can continue to argue from guessed at numbers and suppositions, but then it's a discussion based on person opinion rather than facts. In that case, it become whichever side can shout the other side down or which side gets bored with the discussion first. Plus, multiple authors say that the estimate numbers published in the websites and newspaper articles are way, way off.
Scalzi may be unique in the break out of his sales, but I rather doubt it. What he says agrees with what I've read from other authors who talk in broad terms about revenue streams from audio books, ebooks and paper books. Larry Corriea talks a bit about his various revenue streams and how he gets paid. It's an interesting look into how a real world author makes his money. You might want to read it through all the way because at the very end, he updates to say that in 2014 he made 36% more in 2014 than in 2013. I was pretty surprised to read that he gets significant moneys from the WebSubscription and eARC at Baen.com. That's a very interesting data point. Of course, none of that makes the estimate sites or the Amazon sales figures. Thinking about it, it makes sense that Baen authors see a lot of ebook sales from the WebSubscription rather than Amazon. I buy almost all my ebook purchases for Baen authors (Weber, Corriea, Drake and others) from the WebSubscriptions. Not because it's cheaper, but because I get the books faster that way. Heck, I bought a number of eARC books from Baen for that very reason.
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/...hors-get-paid/
Scalzi's most famous book was Old Man's War some ten years ago. He was already a well respected author when Redshirts and Lock In came out. I think that saying Redshirts was targeted at just the hard core Trekkies is unlikely, especially given the sales numbers. The vast majority of authors would kill for numbers like that.