State of retail publishing 2017

[darryl]

@JSWolf. Whatever happened to the good old days when Industry Reports just ignored the Indie market entirely. After all, books (or ebooks) without an ISBN don't exist, do they?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by darryl

@JSWolf. Whatever happened to the good old days when Industry Reports just ignored the Indie market entirely. After all, books (or ebooks) without an ISBN don't exist, do they?

eBooks without an ISBN do exist.

[HarryT]

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.

That's a little contradictory. An "order of magnitude" is a factor of ten. Selling "almost twice as much" is not a difference that is "orders of magnitude".

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's a little contradictory. An "order of magnitude" is a factor of ten. Selling "almost twice as much" is not a difference that is "orders of magnitude".

Not always. It's not really a precise term. Here is the first definition of Order of Magnitude that Google picks up.

"a class in a system of classification determined by size, each class being a number of times (usually ten) greater or smaller than the one before."

In common usage, many people are simply referring to a rather large difference, as I was in this case.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

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.

No that wasn't the blog post that I was referring to. It was from a few years ago where he listed is actual sales of his book verse the estimated sales. It's been a while and I don't really remember the google search that lead me to the specific posting. Interesting link, I hadn't read that one before.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

No that wasn't the blog post that I was referring to. It was from a few years ago where he listed is actual sales of his book verse the estimated sales. It's been a while and I don't really remember the google search that lead me to the specific posting. Interesting link, I hadn't read that one before.

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/07/...selling-debut/

Bookscan is the service that the Data Guy references.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/07/...selling-debut/

Bookscan is the service that the Data Guy references.

He does reference it, to point out what it misses. Most of the numbers Data Guy cites come from his Bookstat service, which was founded in large part to address the holes in Bookscan's tracking; most notably it certainly does at least attempt to cover ebook sales via its scraping methodology.

It's certainly legitimate to discuss how accurate his numbers are, but it's a very different system from the Bookscan one that Scalzi is criticizing.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Not always. It's not really a precise term. Here is the first definition of Order of Magnitude that Google picks up.

"a class in a system of classification determined by size, each class being a number of times (usually ten) greater or smaller than the one before."

In common usage, many people are simply referring to a rather large difference, as I was in this case.

And how was that in this case in any way better than just typing the word double?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Not always. It's not really a precise term. Here is the first definition of Order of Magnitude that Google picks up.

"a class in a system of classification determined by size, each class being a number of times (usually ten) greater or smaller than the one before."

In common usage, many people are simply referring to a rather large difference, as I was in this case.

I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. The term "order of magnitude" has a precise meaning - certainly in the worlds of science and mathematics. It means "a factor of 10" and nothing else. If I write "3 orders of magnitude", I mean "a factor of 1000". To suggest that a difference of less than double can be described as "orders of magnitude" different is misleading at best.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's a little contradictory. An "order of magnitude" is a factor of ten. Selling "almost twice as much" is not a difference that is "orders of magnitude".

I think language creep got to it.
Bit like decimation no longer means removal of a tenth.

They now seem to just mean "lots higher" and "lots lower".

Personally, I blame the internet
Although "terrific" was mangled way before then

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. The term "order of magnitude" has a precise meaning - certainly in the worlds of science and mathematics. It means "a factor of 10" and nothing else. If I write "3 orders of magnitude", I mean "a factor of 1000". To suggest that a difference of less than double can be described as "orders of magnitude" different is misleading at best.

Sorry if you don't like it, but it is a fairly common usage and I did give you a reference to a dictionary using the phrase in that manner.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Sorry if you don't like it, but it is a fairly common usage and I did give you a reference to a dictionary using the phrase in that manner.

Neither of the Scalzi articles are relevant to your point. That's probably more important than your misuse of a numerical term in a discussion about numbers.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Neither of the Scalzi articles are relevant to your point. That's probably more important than your misuse of a numerical term in a discussion about numbers.

Thanks for bringing the discussion back on track. You are of course correct. I dealt with one article in my last post, and sjfan dealt so effectively with the second one that I did not feel the need to add anything. Also, I think that the position pwalker8 has taken is such that it is better and more effective to allow his posts in this thread to speak for themselves.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. The term "order of magnitude" has a precise meaning - certainly in the worlds of science and mathematics. It means "a factor of 10" and nothing else.

In math and science, "order of magnitude" is often used with respect to the base of operations—that is, if you're doing binary math, an order of magnitude is often (but not always) a factor of 2. If you're working in decimal then base 10 is implicit, but if you're working in another base it's best to specify "decimal order of magnitude" or "binary order of magnitude" (or whatever) explicitly to avoid confusion.

http://teachertech.rice.edu/Particip...magnitude.html
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/bo...-of-magnitude/
http://www.abelard.org/sums/teaching...logarithms.php

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Sorry if you don't like it, but it is a fairly common usage and I did give you a reference to a dictionary using the phrase in that manner.

Your reference stated usually 10, you also used the plural, so even for a base of 2, that is at least a factor of 4, and your post implied Scalzi himself used the phrase "orders of magnitude".