Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
@pwalker. So far you seem to be thoroughly confused. You can't seem to tell the difference between Bookscan, Bookstat and Author Earnings. You do seem to have construed Scalzi's comments on Bookscan as applying to Bookstat and Author Earnings. To use your own statement, with the words in bold, italic and underlined added by me, you say:
When the model (Bookscan) provides results that prove false in one case, then the model (Bookscan) isn't likely to be a reliable guide to actual book sales in other cases.
Yet your argument seems to in fact be:
When the model (Bookscan) provides results that prove false in one case, then the model (Bookstat) isn't likely to be a reliable guide to actual book sales in other cases.
Plainly your argument is absurd given that Bookstat did not exist at the time and Author Earnings to the best of my recollection did not provide a breakup by author.
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The blog post that I pointed to was from this year. Just because I point out that authors say that the estimates are not accurate doesn't make me confused, it just means that I want a little proof before I accept some guy's model as gospel.
If you want to post from some authors who say "yes, his estimates of my sales were spot on" then I'm willing to look. So far I haven't seen any such posts. It's not enough to simply say "Oh well, this model is the only information that we publicly have, so let's just act like it's accurate". I get that people want real data to talk about and I get that people like to speculate. Heck, I even get that people want to accept models that confirm their gut feelings or personal believes. Doesn't make it accurate though.
We are conditioned to accept these sort of models as accurate. Most people accept political polls as accurate, no matter how often they prove wrong when the votes come in. Emotionally, we think they most be accurate because a lot of people pay a lot of money for them, and a lot of people act like they are accurate. Same for TV ratings and Best Seller Lists. Fun to talk about, and a lot of money gets spent based on it, but is it accurate? I rather doubt it.