Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Given that Amazon does not publish sales figures, these numbers are all GUESSES.
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Did you check the Kobo figure?
The little circles?
Actual sales numbers straight from the authors/publishers. Money they earned.
Amazon may not share their sales data but with enough volunteer authors sharing their side of the sales data it is possible to measure sales rates with a high degree of accuracy. And they did.
From that real world data DG reverse engineered the algorithms that the ebookstores use to rank titles in the listings. That is non-trivial. It is also a valid and accurate way to measure the stores' sales. Every time they release a report they combine the spider data with the algorithms and sales data to produce the reports.
Each of the fifteen stores was similarly analyzed. Again, non trivial.
These are valid methods in common use among financial analysis businesses who use the results to direct hundreds of millions and billions worth of investments.
There is a big difference between analytical estimates from extensive data and "guesses".
Are these numbers 100% accurate? No. They don't pretend to be.
They are bulk numbers and the percentages are category-wide. They are not intended to apply to every single book or any single book or author.
It is meaningless to complain that one book or one author sees different outcomes.
These are bulk trends and categiry breakdowns.
But the trends and breakdown numbers are as close to 100% accurate as makes no difference. And the numbers are accurate enough to tell us what the trends are, both good and bad.
Bother to actually look at the numbers and you can see interesting things: like the average book price at iBooks is $2 higher than at Kindle. Not because the individual books are priced higher, but because Apple customers buy more of the expensive books than Kindle buyers.
Or that conspiracy trial fine Apple got hit with? Seemed kinda low compared to the total damage to shoppers? Well, it turns out the fine equals essentially all the net profit iBooks made for Apple over five years. Apparently the judge really believes in the eleventh commandment. (Though shalt not profit from crime.)
It really doesn't matter if BPH ebook sales are down to 20% or 21% of Kindle sales. Because they aren't 19% or 22% and, most importantly, they aren't the 45% of 2014 or the 65% of 2010.
Likewise it doesn't matter if Kindle sales grew by 4% as reported or 4.1% or 3.9%. The important takeaway is they didn't decline or stay flat or grow by 10%. In the face of massive declines (in the 15-20% range) of BPH ebooks Kindle ebook sales still saw moderate growth of a pretty mature market. And since we know the non-Kindle stores rely on BPH sales more that Amazon does we can see that high BPH ebook prices hurt everybody except Amazon.
Similarly, we can see that the boycott of AmazonPublishing titles by the competing ebookstores isn't hurting APub all that much, if at all. They are growing their sales just fine without them, mostly at the expense of the BPHs but also of Indies.
Other tradpubs appear to be holding their own. That is notable. Notable enough DG has announced he intends to look more closely at that block of publishers (many of which are "new publishing" ventures and author coops) to see what is happening, what they are doing that is growing their sales. And that, by the way, is not something that plain store sales numbers can reveal but his methodology can.
AE methodology is credible enough to be the centerpiece of industry events like DBW 2016/2017 and the Romance Writers of America. They are credible enough people are betting their businesses and careers on what they see when they do their own analysis of the data he shares.
http://authorearnings.com/report/dbw2017/
http://authorearnings.com/2016-rwa-pan-presentation/
http://authorearnings.com/2016-digit...-presentation/
People who actually know what they are doing have vetted the AE reports and they pass muster. They're not guesses. They reflect reality. Get over it, guys.
Considering we readers have very little, if anything, riding on what they reveal (besides satisfying our curiosity) there is no reason to get riled up over what they say, is there?
It's just a bit of news about what is going on around us.