6 ms·

> Wouldn't sales naturally decay over time anyway? The author doesn't even know the month the book was pirated, so I'm pretty skeptical that they've measured th

> Wouldn't sales naturally decay over time anyway? The author doesn't even know the month the book was pirated, so I'm pretty skeptical that they've measured the impact of piracy reliably. What...? The author gave a pretty darn clear timeline: - I released Overcoming Gravity 1st Edition in 2011 - Overcoming Gravity 1st Edition was pirated around August or September of 2012. - "Book sales immediately dropped 40% over 3 months."

ALittleLight 6y ago
I disagree that that's clear. What month was it released in? What month pirated? What was the trend of sales up to that point? Even the phrase "sales immediately dropped 40% over 3 months" is unclear because things that are immediate usually don't take 3 months. A graph showing sales with an annotation on when the piracy happened would be clear. Even better if it could be compared to similar books and sales figures.
- dataflow 6y ago
  Can you clarify what exactly you're insinuating here? Do you think it's likely that sales in fact have been dropping 40% every 3 months but the author is too clueless to notice it for any other 3-month period except that one? Or are you alleging the author is lying? What scenario seems more plausible to you here than the one that involves piracy actually having caused the drop?
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I don't think I'm insinuating anything. I'm forthrightly saying I don't think the evidence is clear enough to support the conclusions in the OP. I then pointed to specific problems - we don't know the publication date for the first book, the piracy date, the trend of sales before piracy, or what trends are typical of similar books. I also think the author's jump to accuse an Amazon employee of piracy is evidence of a tendency to jump to unsupported conclusions. I personally doubt the author is lying. I assume the author is stating what they think and giving the evidence they have. That's good, but I don't think their conclusion follows from their evidence.
    - dataflow 6y ago
      It's like if I told you I lost my 1-year-old credit card and suddenly 3 months later I saw notifications of $10k in extra charges and therefore think someone is abusing it, and now you're objecting "but you don't even tell me what month this happened in??", "but how do you know those notifications were legit?!", "how many notifications did you get normally?!", etc... At that point, you're throwing common sense out the window and insinuating the other person is either just stupid or deliberately lying to you, whether you explicitly say this or not.
      - MikeUt 6y ago
        Sales dropping over time is more common [1] than unexpected $10k charges to a credit card. It also has many more explanations. The scenarios are so different, the analogy is frankly dishonest. [1] It is, in fact, the rule. And can be much faster and bigger than 40% in 3 months: https://www.addthis.com/blog/2014/04/21/can-social-buzz-predict-video-game-sales/ https://www.addthis.com/blog/2014/04/21/can-social-buzz-pred...
      - SaltySolomon 6y ago
        A drop of sales is so common, and espeically a more sharper after the core customer base has bought the book. So yes, the OP is probably a novice to the whole book selling buisness.
      - lone-commenter 6y ago
        We may agree that piracy is theft, but 'ALittleLight has a point. From Novembrer 2011 — when it was published — to September 2012 — when the author believes it's been "pirated" — there is a window of just 10 months. Not 21 months. 10 months. Now, did sales beging to drop only after September? Were them already going down? How long before? How do sales typically go over time for books? For Amazon books? Other possible causes? Moreover, I think your analogy is completely off. Here is a better one. You can't find your credit card anymore. You are notified of suspect online payments by your bank. Thinking about it, you're quite sure you left it at the supermarket; and you somehow conclude that that sneaky cashier must have stolen it. But it turns out, your son got a trojan while trying to pirate a PlayStation game on your family PC with the magnificent Windows XP, and your card number was saved in Google Chrome.

ALittleLight 6y ago

I disagree that that's clear. What month was it released in? What month pirated? What was the trend of sales up to that point? Even the phrase "sales immediately dropped 40% over 3 months" is unclear because things that are immediate usually don't take 3 months. A graph showing sales with an annotation on when the piracy happened would be clear. Even better if it could be compared to similar books and sales figures.

dataflow 6y ago
Can you clarify what exactly you're insinuating here? Do you think it's likely that sales in fact have been dropping 40% every 3 months but the author is too clueless to notice it for any other 3-month period except that one? Or are you alleging the author is lying? What scenario seems more plausible to you here than the one that involves piracy actually having caused the drop?
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I don't think I'm insinuating anything. I'm forthrightly saying I don't think the evidence is clear enough to support the conclusions in the OP. I then pointed to specific problems - we don't know the publication date for the first book, the piracy date, the trend of sales before piracy, or what trends are typical of similar books. I also think the author's jump to accuse an Amazon employee of piracy is evidence of a tendency to jump to unsupported conclusions. I personally doubt the author is lying. I assume the author is stating what they think and giving the evidence they have. That's good, but I don't think their conclusion follows from their evidence.
  - dataflow 6y ago
    It's like if I told you I lost my 1-year-old credit card and suddenly 3 months later I saw notifications of $10k in extra charges and therefore think someone is abusing it, and now you're objecting "but you don't even tell me what month this happened in??", "but how do you know those notifications were legit?!", "how many notifications did you get normally?!", etc... At that point, you're throwing common sense out the window and insinuating the other person is either just stupid or deliberately lying to you, whether you explicitly say this or not.
    - MikeUt 6y ago
      Sales dropping over time is more common [1] than unexpected $10k charges to a credit card. It also has many more explanations. The scenarios are so different, the analogy is frankly dishonest. [1] It is, in fact, the rule. And can be much faster and bigger than 40% in 3 months: https://www.addthis.com/blog/2014/04/21/can-social-buzz-predict-video-game-sales/ https://www.addthis.com/blog/2014/04/21/can-social-buzz-pred...
    - SaltySolomon 6y ago
      A drop of sales is so common, and espeically a more sharper after the core customer base has bought the book. So yes, the OP is probably a novice to the whole book selling buisness.
    - lone-commenter 6y ago
      We may agree that piracy is theft, but 'ALittleLight has a point. From Novembrer 2011 — when it was published — to September 2012 — when the author believes it's been "pirated" — there is a window of just 10 months. Not 21 months. 10 months. Now, did sales beging to drop only after September? Were them already going down? How long before? How do sales typically go over time for books? For Amazon books? Other possible causes? Moreover, I think your analogy is completely off. Here is a better one. You can't find your credit card anymore. You are notified of suspect online payments by your bank. Thinking about it, you're quite sure you left it at the supermarket; and you somehow conclude that that sneaky cashier must have stolen it. But it turns out, your son got a trojan while trying to pirate a PlayStation game on your family PC with the magnificent Windows XP, and your card number was saved in Google Chrome.