Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Actually no, John Scalzi is the author that I was referring to. He's one of the few authors who will publicly break out his sales figures. He mentioned that the Data Guy was off by orders of magnitude in one of his blog post. He compared his actual sales figures with what was estimated and he sold almost twice as much.
The key word in your post is "claims".
Computer models, which is basically what this is, are an interesting tool, but accuracy is a key. Being off that much doesn't imply 90% accuracy. There is a saying in programming, Garbage in, Garbage out. Just because something is driven by a fancy set of calculations doesn't mean it's accurate if the assumptions driving the calculations are faulty. We see that all the time in political polling. Political polls tend to be off by far more than the listed margin of error a large part of the time, at least compared to the actual voting numbers.
It's a bit like the NYT best seller list. It's a great marketing tool and certain can help drive sales for individual books, but most recognize that being on the NYT best seller list doesn't really mean you are at the top in actual book sales.
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Are you in fact referring to this?
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/09/...pe-not-at-all/
If so, it is Apples and Oranges. DG's data claims to cover US ebook purchases and US Ebook dollar sales. It is not about what a particular author earns or when. It is about how many books are sold and how much money those sales bring in. Not how much a particular author actually makes.
If not, please link to the article(s) you refer to.