I’ve been looking at the Author Earnings Excel spreadsheets (the “raw data”) for the last few days. Many people have become very, very excited by the conclusions the authors draw from this data, and critics have consistently been shouted down as being pro-publisher, anti-self-publishing, or having various other axes to grind.
I have no dog in this hunt. I’m not a fiction author and very little of my income comes from royalties or other direct remuneration from writing. I have to write and publish in order to earn promotions and salary increases, and to be respected in my field, but that writing is judged on quality, reliability, and academic contribution. No one really cares about sales.
How not to lie with statistics | Dear Author.