Author Earnings goes international

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Given that Amazon does not publish sales figures, these numbers are all GUESSES.

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.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rkomar

So, what's your point? Would you prefer that no one made any effort at all to figure things out?

I would rather no information than information that's just a guess that could be very wrong.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

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.

And what about authors who do have actual figures saying these figures are wrong?

These numbers ARE A GUESS. That's all they are. There is no way to say they're accurate. Sorry, but unless Amazon and B&N and Kobo and Google and all the other stores WORLD WIDE release numbers, this is a GUESS and it's wildly inaccurate as they do not take into account every single store world wide,

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would rather no information than information that's just a guess that could be very wrong.

Well then you're free to ignore it. It's also up to you prove that it is "just a guess that could be very wrong" if you want to convince others to ignore it, too. You're equating "not 100% correct" with "could be very wrong". Judging by all the effort put into the numbers, it's likely that they are "not far off 100% correct", which makes them worth paying attention to. Your hand-waving argument isn't even close to being as rigorous, yet you expect people to believe you more than the reports.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Well then you're free to ignore it. It's also up to you prove that it is "just a guess that could be very wrong" if you want to convince others to ignore it, too. You're equating "not 100% correct" with "could be very wrong". Judging by all the effort put into the numbers, it's likely that they are "not far off 100% correct", which makes them worth paying attention to. Your hand-waving argument isn't even close to being as rigorous, yet you expect people to believe you more than the reports.

I have to disagree with that. We know that these numbers are simply estimates because we know that none of the companies involved be they ebook stores or publishers, release the real numbers. We know that some authors who do have the real numbers say that the estimates are way off. That would indicate that the estimates are not "not far off 100% correct".

Is it likely that the gross relationship between the 4 books stores is more or less right? I suspect so, it at least passes the smell test. However, when you start to talk about total ebook sales going up or down by a few percentage points, which likely are well within the margin of error, well then you are in a situation much like the political polling numbers in various elections over the past year. People assume they are accurate, yet when the actual returns came in, those polls proved to be very inaccurate simply because they made assumptions in their methodology that didn't accurately reflect reality. It may have been their best estimate, but it wasn't accurate.

Are indies squeezing out the big publishers? Well, that certainly squares with some posters favored narratives, yet it's just as likely that the estimates are biased towards indies for various reasons. Models are only truly worthwhile as a predictor if they can be validated against real numbers. This particular model can not.

Another reason that I tend to be skeptical is that if you ever follow the financials of various publicly traded companies, you would know that they come out with quarterly financial statements. A lot of analysts are paid a lot of money to come up with estimates on what a company is going to do in a given quarter, yet the vast majority of the time, those analysts are quite wrong in their financial estimates. If they can't get it right with all their resources, why would I think this guy can get it right on a shoestring budget?

Are you free to assume this guy is divinely inspired and 100% accurate? Sure, if that's the way you roll, you are are free to assume whatever you want. But doesn't make it true.

[rkomar]

You can't point to a few authors and say, just because their numbers differ, that the statistics for the industry as a whole are wrong. Unless every author experienced the changes in sales in exactly the same way (highly unlikely), then you would expect that some did well and some did poorly. It's the distribution that matters statistically, not how any particular author did. Likewise, you can't use the distribution to predict precisely how any particular author will do. All you can do is make broad statements about the industry as a whole. So, pointing to a few authors proves nothing. Pointing to a sample of 10,000 authors is much more telling. This is all basic statistics.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by rkomar

All you can do is make broad statements about the industry as a whole.

Exactly.
That is all the reports set out to do.
And as readers, who have no vested interest in the fate of any one author or book, broad statements about the general trends of the industry is where our vested interests lie.

Will anybody rise to significantly challenge Amazon any time soon? Will Kindle Unlimited keep driving exclusive titles to Amazon? Will BPH pricing keep reducing their share of sales and influence and keep on crippling the careers of their debut authors?

Inquiring minds want to know.
The rest will just cling to their anecdotes and outliers.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by rkomar

You can't point to a few authors and say, just because their numbers differ, that the statistics for the industry as a whole are wrong. Unless every author experienced the changes in sales in exactly the same way (highly unlikely), then you would expect that some did well and some did poorly. It's the distribution that matters statistically, not how any particular author did. Likewise, you can't use the distribution to predict precisely how any particular author will do. All you can do is make broad statements about the industry as a whole. So, pointing to a few authors proves nothing. Pointing to a sample of 10,000 authors is much more telling. This is all basic statistics.

But they don't point at any authors, that's the issue. This is a model without any validation. It's not a sampling of 10,000 authors, it's some guy who who tries to figure out what the actual sales numbers are based on various indicators. If he was actually comparing his guesses to the real sales figures for a sampling of 10,000 authors that might be a reasonable way to validate his model, depending on the sampling. You can't calculate something from nothing even with basic statistics. Garbage in/Garbage out.

Let's put it this way, what this guy is doing is the equivalent of in basebase, looking at the a batter's second at bat for 5 games a month and using that to project a likely batting average for the season. Of course, in baseball, we actually know what a given hitter's batting average is, so we know that most of the time, this methodology doesn't yield accurate projections.

I get that people really want to know the actual sales figures. People like surety. That's why there are analyst making a lot of money in a lot of fields. Heck, that's also why fortune tellers are still with us and still making money. But sometimes you just have to accept that you aren't going to know.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Exactly.
That is all the reports set out to do.
And as readers, who have no vested interest in the fate of any one author or book, broad statements about the general trends of the industry is where our vested interests lie.

Will anybody rise to significantly challenge Amazon any time soon? Will Kindle Unlimited keep driving exclusive titles to Amazon? Will BPH pricing keep reducing their share of sales and influence and keep on crippling the careers of their debut authors?

Inquiring minds want to know.
The rest will just cling to their anecdotes and outliers.

What you dismiss as anecdotes and outliers is proof that the methodology is inaccurate. You can't generate valid statements about general trends from inaccurate information. Just because something matches your personal views doesn't make it accurate.

[soulfuldog]

Informed opinion on estimated sales figures can still be interesting. Even official figures can be manipulated, so what's the big deal about this?

[JSWolf]

One major problem with the numbers is that they do not take into account the entire world.Most of these sort of sales figures forget the world. This one is better than most in that regard, but it still falls majorly flat. What about Japan & Russia where eBook reading is rather popular? There are still other countries left out the report. So overall, I would call this report rubbish and misleading. There are countries where Amazon is not the leading seller of eBooks and this person forgets that and won't mention them.

Even if these numbers were true, the totals are wrong because there are not enough numbers to get a correct total.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

But they don't point at any authors, that's the issue. This is a model without any validation. It's not a sampling of 10,000 authors, it's some guy who who tries to figure out what the actual sales numbers are based on various indicators. If he was actually comparing his guesses to the real sales figures for a sampling of 10,000 authors that might be a reasonable way to validate his model, depending on the sampling. You can't calculate something from nothing even with basic statistics. Garbage in/Garbage out.

Except that they do use actual data from actual authors, at least according to their methodology and everything I have seen. They don't share who those authors are and they don't share their calibration data (due to privacy issues) but they do have actual data. And need it in order to make sure it works.

At the original link:

All of it calibrated against 700,000 points of raw, unfiltered daily sales data, from over 20,000 distinct ebook titles across all 15 stores."

It may not be quite 10,000 authors but it is 20,000 books, so it is at least a decent size.

[JSWolf]

Why were most countries int he world left out? Either do it right or don't do it.