We live in a literary world.

[Cinisajoy]

Normally I wouldn't share this particular blog, but it struck me as semi-accurate and hilarious.
https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-...lished-authors

His figures are way off as always. The ad at the bottom of this blog was for covenant books. A company that publishes unknowns for a fee.

[darryl]

Thanks for the link. To read one of Michael's articles again reminds me why I don't bother with his blog any more. He hasn't changed. Semi-accurate is right. Some few accurate observations are there amongst the mishmash of misinformation and misinterpretation. It reminds me of the Author's United letters and Joe Konrath's fisking of them. In fact, it almost cries out for a similar fisking.

I find it both amusing and annoying.

[Deskisamess]

Many of his points are valid. I am curious how many people just wander aimlessly through Amazon looking for their next book. It is indeed a very large sludge pile.

Which numbers are wrong?

I remember an indie author spamming on one of the Amazon Kindle forums. He was convinced he would sell enough to earn $1,000 a week. I've lost track of his name...I followed him for a while to see if he garnered any reviews. I never saw one, good or bad.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Many of his points are valid. I am curious how many people just wander aimlessly through Amazon looking for their next book. It is indeed a very large sludge pile.

Which numbers are wrong?

I remember an indie author spamming on one of the Amazon Kindle forums. He was convinced he would sell enough to earn $1,000 a week. I've lost track of his name...I followed him for a while to see if he garnered any reviews. I never saw one, good or bad.

I figure the sludge figure is way low. That is probably a good figure for the sludge fiction.

[JSWolf]

I tried. I really did. But I just could not read that BadEReader post. I had to close the tab and get out fast. It was awful in there. Cinisajoy, please do others a favor and delete the link.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Many of his points are valid. I am curious how many people just wander aimlessly through Amazon looking for their next book. It is indeed a very large sludge pile.

Which numbers are wrong?

I remember an indie author spamming on one of the Amazon Kindle forums. He was convinced he would sell enough to earn $1,000 a week. I've lost track of his name...I followed him for a while to see if he garnered any reviews. I never saw one, good or bad.

There is so much wrong with the article that it really does need a fisking to do it justice. If only I had the time. And the talent.

It is not so much that his figures are wrong. It is the observations he makes based on these figures. One that stuck out particularly was his reference to the plunging sales of consumer ebooks. It is not that the figures he presumably relies on are wrong. It is simply that they exclude Indies and in particular Amazon! So of course the declining ebook market then needs saving, when what in fact needs saving is traditional publishing's share of it. And, of course, he makes no reference to agency pricing and high retail prices for these books.

Another example is indie author's earnings. He states how few make a living from it, but in the next breath points out that for most of them it is a hobby. And, of course, he makes no comparison with the earnings of traditional authors, current or historical. Most of them don't make a living either, and didn't even before self-publishing. Once again his figures are presumably accurate, but he has used them to mislead.

A few words of my own on discoverability. There is no question that it is now very easy to self-publish. And discoverability is of course a huge challenge to Indie authors. It is a problem. The decision to buy a book used to be made by visiting a book store and perusing a sometimes large but manageable stock of books. In an online store, the sheer number of books is not manageable. The supply may as well be infinite. We all develop our own strategies for dealing with this, and businesses are falling over themselves to find methods to help us do so. But we are still in a transition phase here. It remains open to anyone for whom the Indie experience doesn't work to simply confine themselves to traditionally published books. There are some Mobileread members who do this, and I applaud them for doing so, though if I adopted this course I would miss out on books by many of my now favourite authors. Some mostly adopt this approach but will buy an occasional recommended Indie. The rest of us presumably recognise the discoverability problem but find it preferable to the old limited choice curated by self-appointed gatekeepers. And develop our own methods to select books.

I have never met someone coming from a brick and mortar bookshop saying they were overwhelmed by the Indie titles and could not find a good quality book. Michael seems to overlook the fact that traditional brick and mortar bookshops stock few if any Indies. Try finding even an Amazon imprint in most brick and mortar book stores. I'm in Australia, so perhaps things are different in the US, though I doubt it. I suspect if such bookstores adopted Michael's suggestion of segregation then there would be whole stores devoted entirely to traditionally published books, whilst some may devote a shelf or two to the few Indies they stock. Online, you can search and filter to your heart's content. It is an ineffective solution to a non-existent problem.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I tried. I really did. But I just could not read that BadEReader post. I had to close the tab and get out fast. It was awful in there. Cinisajoy, please do others a favor and delete the link.

My work is done here.

[ZodWallop]

I buy mainly indie and small press titles from Amazon. Admittedly a lot (but not all) of it is former midlist writers who's books have gone out of print and been brought back as indie titles. But Amazon's recommendation algorithm and "Customers who bought this item also bought" suggestions seem to work out well for me. I rarely see stuff that is clearly bottom-of-the-barrel crap. I know that it's out there. I just don't see much of it.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by darryl

Thanks for the link. To read one of Michael's articles again reminds me why I don't bother with his blog any more....

I find it both amusing and annoying.

I've stopped reading him a few years ago, when an article written by him was linked om MR by one of the members here. When reading it, there was some strange stuff in there... some predictions with regard to e-reading.

He said things such as: "I've spoken to some publishing pundits, active in the industry for many years. They think that, in a few years, e-books will be streamed page by page, just as games are streamed frame by frame."

That sounded very familiar, and it was. He was quoting/copying/rewriting some of my posts and arguments written on MR (by *ME*), in a discussion about the future of e-book reading, where I was extrapolating the trends of the day as possibilities for the future. He took those and presented them as 'predictions by industry pundits."

I should have saved those links (screenshots), to be honest, but that was when I stopped reading his site.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...He was quoting/copying/rewriting some of my posts and arguments written on MR (by *ME*)... He took those and presented them as 'predictions by industry pundits."

I never knew I was rubbing shoulders with a literary pundit

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

That sounded very familiar, and it was. He was quoting/copying/rewriting some of my posts and arguments written on MR (by *ME*), in a discussion about the future of e-book reading, where I was extrapolating the trends of the day as possibilities for the future. He took those and presented them as 'predictions by industry pundits."

If you steal from one source, it's plagiarism. If you steal from multiple sources, it's research.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Many of his points are valid. I am curious how many people just wander aimlessly through Amazon looking for their next book. It is indeed a very large sludge pile.

Which numbers are wrong?

Wandering aimlessly through Amazon looking for my next book is kind of fun. It's not my best way of finding books but it's probably the one I enjoy most. And I do find books that way at times.

It's a bit similar to wandering through a book store, picking up a book here and there when the cover or title attracts you and glancing at the back cover to see if you're interested. The biggest difference at Amazon is that they also have user reviews; thus more information, usually, if not always, helpful and reliable.

I think Goodereader's statement "We live in a world full of terrible e-book titles that ruin ebook discovery and make it difficult to find a good book." is just silly. Yes there are more bad books available. But there are far more resources and much better information available to help us find the sorts of books we want.

Technology is problem solving and when you find a solution to a problem you nearly always introduce new problems, followed by new solutions which introduce more problems. Koslowski's statement focuses on the problems created by good solutions and ignores the solutions to those problems.

As for which numbers are wrong, "It is no small wonder why e-book sales have plummeted in recent years." is wrong. Ebook sales by major publishers, as reflected in numbers from organizations of major publishers have gone down as their prices skyrocketed. Ebook sales overall have increased according to Data Guy. Koslowski didn't give numbers in that statement so please rephrase your question to ask which relationships are wrong. It's not arithmetic. It's analysis.

Here's my version. Technology has made reading a lot better and freed us from the strictures of publishers so we have more books available. It's also given us better tools to find the kind of books we want. We have Bookbub, Goodreads, Book Gorilla, etc. And the old standby, word of mouth is now word of forum, blog, email, SMS, etc. Finding a good book to read has never been easier.

The problem, as I see it, isn't finding enough good books, it's figuring out how many I can afford to buy and selecting from those just the ones I want most. It's a little like the Assassin getting his 40 virgins and scratching his head as he tries to choose. Oh what a difficult problem!!!

Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I buy mainly indie and small press titles from Amazon. Admittedly a lot (but not all) of it is former midlist writers who's books have gone out of print and been brought back as indie titles.

I read an article somewhere this weekend, on some blog, discussing the fact that the big publishers are beginning to drop their midlist authors for some sort of economic reasons. If that's true we'll probably have more and better writers being self-published and going to small publishers in the near future.

Barry

[darryl]

Originally Posted by barryem

I read an article somewhere this weekend, on some blog, discussing the fact that the big publishers are beginning to drop their midlist authors for some sort of economic reasons. If that's true we'll probably have more and better writers being self-published and going to small publishers in the near future.

Barry

I think it was a link to Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Nate's blog. Apparently they have already dropped most of their midlisters and are now dropping many of their bestsellers or drastically reducing their remuneration. Apparently an author now needs far fewer sales to make the best seller lists and even best selling authors are selling far fewer books than they used to. Apparently John Grisham was quoted in that venerable fake news outlet (certainly when it comes to their Best Seller Lists and reporting on EBooks), the New York Times, as saying he now sells half the numbers he did before "the great recession". KKR points out that the rise of ebooks was just after the great recession.

Here's the link to KKR's article for those who are interested:

The Rip Van Winkle Syndrome

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by darryl

I think it was a link to Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Nate's blog. Apparently they have already dropped most of their midlisters and are now dropping many of their bestsellers or drastically reducing their remuneration. Apparently an author now needs far fewer sales to make the best seller lists and even best selling authors are selling far fewer books than they used to. Apparently John Grisham was quoted in that venerable fake news outlet (certainly when it comes to their Best Seller Lists and reporting on EBooks), the New York Times, as saying he now sells half the numbers he did before "the great recession". KKR points out that the rise of ebooks was just after the great recession.

Here's the link to KKR's article for those who are interested:

The Rip Van Winkle Syndrome

Interesting!