By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
Issues on the Ether: Lists of Books…and Biases?
[su_dropcap size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]o put it crassly:
- Bomb out as a traditionally aspiring author, and there’s no effect on surveys of author income.
- Bomb out as a self-publishing author, and your flat-line is counted against the overall self-publishing earnings track record.
Author Hugh Howey wants us to understand that this is a double standard. He is not wrong. We cannot count the dollars made by traditional authors only if they get published, but count those made by all the self-publishing authors, no matter how they fare in the open market.
If we want to count all the self-publishing authors, then we need to count every hapless no-income-from-writing wanted-to-be-traditionally-published author who gets nowhere and ends up at the bar next to me discussing the superb color that Milan puts into Campari.
- Our surveys are counting the self-publishing losers as well as winners.
- Our surveys are counting only traditional publishers’ winners.
Howey writes:
Even if you just guessed at the number of [traditionally] submitted manuscripts that make it to publication being at 1% (which I think is awfully generous), you would immediately see a completely different landscape. Take the top 1% of self-published books and compare their earnings with traditionally published books. That would be something to behold.
Read the full post: JaneFriedman.com
