4 ms·

I really don't like "fact-checking" articles like this which don't contain many useful facts, only pedantry. The first comment (by Kristen McLean from NPD BookS

I really don't like "fact-checking" articles like this which don't contain many useful facts, only pedantry. The first comment (by Kristen McLean from NPD BookScan) is much more interesting than the article itself: >>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies >>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies >>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies >>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies >>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies So, ~66.1% or 2/3 of books in their dataset sell under a thousand copies.

II2II 4y ago
The pedantry was intended to point out that there is plenty of room for publishers to mislead when they don't detail how the data is collected. When you don't have access to the data, it is usually the best one can do. Even the comment by Kristen McLean has limits, though they are much more forthcoming about what the data includes. That said, I think they summed it up best when they said publishing is a gambler's game. That being said, whether the outcome is good or bad for a gambler depends upon how much they invested and the return across all of those bets. Their data does not venture into financial aspects. At best, it gives us an idea of the minimum number of units sold in a particular subset of the market.
Cyberdog 4y ago
I think those data points work together with the "let's think this through for a bit" approach of the article. Particularly, note that the stats that you quoted in your comment are for a 52-week period and include everything that could be considered a "book." I think it's quite logical that 2007's Farmer's Almanac would sell less than 12 copies in the last year, or some vanity-published, typo-laden sci-fi novel of the type my family would sometimes get for me for Christmas (because if it's sold by the Amazon dot Com then it can't be that bad, right?).
yieldcrv 4y ago
I was just about to comment this as well, I think that 66% selling under 1,000 is just as damning as the "less than 12 copies" thing making the rounds from the DOJ interpretation Books ain't it!
subroutine 4y ago
The author's first point was that anything with a unique ISBN is treated as a different book. > From a sales tracking perspective, books are published in multiple formats, each with different ISBNs. I wrote one novel, but from a title count POV I actually published 4 books: hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Other books have even more formats (mass market version, movie tie-in editions, etc.) and because they all have different ISBNs, they all have different sales figures. I would like to see stats that collapse across different versions of (largely) the same text (including new versions or editions of text books, and re-releases that include some special commentary, etc.)
rndgermandude 4y ago
There were many useful facts that I hadn't considered, to be honest, especially regarding what was counted (probbly print sales tracked by BookScan) and how (unique ISBNs). Also, whenever some party brings up stats to make some point, I think it's fair to examine their figures, methodology and so on and just be a bit pedantic about it. And this was a claim made in a major antitrust case. The facts, and the general pedantry, show some serious likely issues and raise some important questions about the figures a party in a major trial made, and which were then - mostly uncritically - echoed all over the place. Regarding Kristen McLeans comment: The "in their dataset" is a very important detail that shouldn't be overlooked. The dataset for this is the book sales figures of the top 10 publisher published books. They get the numbers from partnered retailers (some 75% of retailers according to the article), and it only covers print copies, not ebooks, not audio books. It does not cover direct sales to larger organizational buyers, like library systems, either. And it's grouped by unique ISBN, not by title. As the article points out, most books come in many editions (hardcover, paperback, etc), each of which has their own ISBN. The article author illustrates this by telling about his own book, which is one book with 4 different unique ISBNs (though one was for an ebook, and one for the audio book, both of which wouldn't be covered by this dataset anyway).

II2II 4y ago

The pedantry was intended to point out that there is plenty of room for publishers to mislead when they don't detail how the data is collected. When you don't have access to the data, it is usually the best one can do. Even the comment by Kristen McLean has limits, though they are much more forthcoming about what the data includes. That said, I think they summed it up best when they said publishing is a gambler's game. That being said, whether the outcome is good or bad for a gambler depends upon how much they invested and the return across all of those bets. Their data does not venture into financial aspects. At best, it gives us an idea of the minimum number of units sold in a particular subset of the market.

Cyberdog 4y ago

I think those data points work together with the "let's think this through for a bit" approach of the article. Particularly, note that the stats that you quoted in your comment are for a 52-week period and include everything that could be considered a "book." I think it's quite logical that 2007's Farmer's Almanac would sell less than 12 copies in the last year, or some vanity-published, typo-laden sci-fi novel of the type my family would sometimes get for me for Christmas (because if it's sold by the Amazon dot Com then it can't be that bad, right?).

yieldcrv 4y ago

I was just about to comment this as well, I think that 66% selling under 1,000 is just as damning as the "less than 12 copies" thing making the rounds from the DOJ interpretation Books ain't it!

subroutine 4y ago

The author's first point was that anything with a unique ISBN is treated as a different book. > From a sales tracking perspective, books are published in multiple formats, each with different ISBNs. I wrote one novel, but from a title count POV I actually published 4 books: hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Other books have even more formats (mass market version, movie tie-in editions, etc.) and because they all have different ISBNs, they all have different sales figures. I would like to see stats that collapse across different versions of (largely) the same text (including new versions or editions of text books, and re-releases that include some special commentary, etc.)

rndgermandude 4y ago

There were many useful facts that I hadn't considered, to be honest, especially regarding what was counted (probbly print sales tracked by BookScan) and how (unique ISBNs). Also, whenever some party brings up stats to make some point, I think it's fair to examine their figures, methodology and so on and just be a bit pedantic about it. And this was a claim made in a major antitrust case. The facts, and the general pedantry, show some serious likely issues and raise some important questions about the figures a party in a major trial made, and which were then - mostly uncritically - echoed all over the place. Regarding Kristen McLeans comment: The "in their dataset" is a very important detail that shouldn't be overlooked. The dataset for this is the book sales figures of the top 10 publisher published books. They get the numbers from partnered retailers (some 75% of retailers according to the article), and it only covers print copies, not ebooks, not audio books. It does not cover direct sales to larger organizational buyers, like library systems, either. And it's grouped by unique ISBN, not by title. As the article points out, most books come in many editions (hardcover, paperback, etc), each of which has their own ISBN. The article author illustrates this by telling about his own book, which is one book with 4 different unique ISBNs (though one was for an ebook, and one for the audio book, both of which wouldn't be covered by this dataset anyway).