# Is there survivorship bias on KBoards?



## hs (Feb 15, 2011)

I came across this article today about survivorship bias when it comes to what you read about self publishing: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2013/05/27/survivorship-bias-why-90-of-the-advice-about-writing-is-bullshit-right-now/

It made me wonder if the typical poster on KBoards is on the successful end of the spectrum or really representative of the "average" indie authors. Based on the all of the advice I've been reading, I suspect that the active participants on these boards are savvier than average and tend to be the ones who work hard at making publishing a successful endeavor instead of giving up when their one and only book fails to sell. But, judging from the posts where selling hundreds of copies of books per month is normal, I also suspect that the authors who follow the advice on these boards but don't sell aren't as visible, so we get a skewed view of what "average" looks like.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Is there survivorship bias on KBoards?

Oodles of it.

By the way, the article linked to in the article you linked to is linked to below.  It's long, but awesome in the extreme.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

While I think you are right, hs, in your opinion of the average KB indie author, one of the things that went through my mind as I read the article is how KB authors post about what *didn't* work for them all the time. Someone who reads a lot of Writers' Cafe threads would get the recommended wide view of indie publishing, I think.


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## Zelah Meyer (Jun 15, 2011)

Well, those who persist are going to do a better job of surviving - and a sense of community can help encourage you to persist.  So yes, I'd expect that Kindleboards authors do skew the average a bit.  

There is definitely a 'favoured approach' on the boards - exactly what that is morphs over time.  However, there are lots of different approaches & the trick is reading the boards, reading blogs, reading books, and working out what fits with who you are and what you want to achieve.


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## Paul StJohn Mackintosh (May 22, 2013)

I'd say yes, but take a look at the follow-up interview I did with Tobias on exactly this subject, on TeleRead:

http://www.teleread.com/interview/tobias-buckell-speaks-more-on-self-publishing-hype/


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

I think the problem is thinking there are any rules to success. Like this bias thing assumes that you can figure out how to be successful by studying successes AND failures, not just successes. But in truth, there is no way at all to know what will be successful and what won't. There are some commonalities, but there are just as many frustrating anomalies. It is pointless to try.

But then, I feel like I post this like every three days here, so maybe I'm turning into a broken record.

Entropy! Chaos! Everything is (mostly) random!

Just have fun and do whatever you want, and you'll probably be just as likely at making it as anyone else.

(Unless doing whatever you want is writing romance in which case you have it made in the shade. But the down side of that, of course, is that you'll probably always feel denigrated because it's "just romance." So, see, everyone has it rough.)



Never give up. Never surrender. Always believe that you are the special s***flake that can do what most everyone else can't. _That_ is how you succeed. Just keep at it until they can't ignore you.


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## Ty Johnston (Jun 19, 2009)

Paul StJohn Mackintosh said:


> I'd say yes, but take a look at the follow-up interview I did with Tobias on exactly this subject, on TeleRead:
> 
> http://www.teleread.com/interview/tobias-buckell-speaks-more-on-self-publishing-hype/


Very nice followup piece. Thanks for that.


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## Rykymus (Dec 3, 2011)

I will never understand why anyone cares about all these different people rambling on giving their opinions about this that and the other thing. What makes this guy's opinion special over any other person out there? It's all just a bunch of "Look at me! I'm successful so you should respect what I think! And oh, by the way, buy my book!" It's all just marketing garbage. It's all just a way to get us to click on his article and garner some attention for himself in order to sell books. I never heard of this guy until today, and I don't care what he or anyone else has to say about the industry. It's all just yakkity yak, and it means absolutely nothing. Just another way of waving your arms and yelling "Look at me! Look at me!" Yet we all act is if it has meaning and value, which it really doesn't. He hasn't said anything at all that hasn't been said a million times over in the past.

I miss the craft threads.


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## Bec (Aug 24, 2012)

Monique said:


> By the way, the article linked to in the article you linked to is linked to below.  It's long, but awesome in the extreme.
> 
> http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/


Thanks for linking that, great read! The mathematics part was really interesting, and the part on luck sounds very spot on! The description of 'unlucky' people fit a few that I know to a tee, who always complain about being unlucky!

Without realising it, I've already followed a bit of it's advice already - I look at really low ranking e-books, or ones that have never sold a single copy, and think about why... I don't just look at the successes.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

According to him, we're you're not a hybrid then you're doing it wrong. That is at least as debatable as the ideas of the people he criticises. As for his graphs, he needs to talk to someone who actually understands using data even more than Mark Coker does. He claims to want to examine the middle by eliminating the top which skews the data by still including the bottom.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Hell, yes, there is survivorship bias on the KB. Tons and tons of it. Look at the sales threads. Look at the Select thread. Look at the "are you making a living" thread.

There are 60,000-something people on this board. Most don't speak up on these threads because they don't have ANYWHERE NEAR those sales, even of people who report Select giveaways of 200 copies, and people who tell everyone I sold only 50 copies this month haha, that's a tenth of what I sold in January.

There are tons and tons and tons of people who never say that their BBoS never went away for a whole month, or who are happy with one or two sales.

But, you know what? That's not an exclusive thing to self-publishing.

If you start talking to currently-published authors, you'll have a hard time finding an author who will complain that sales are crap, their publisher is not buying their next series, and none of the books they sold ever earned out their advance.

It's the nature of people. If they can't brag, most people say nothing at all.

I think we need to look at a number of things:

1. Redefine "success". Most trad-pub-only authors don't exactly make a shitload of money either
2. Any money is better than no money (this is where Bucknell and Wendig go wrong, IMO)
3. (very importantly) The time factor: For all sorts of reasons, many writers simply don't want to or can't wait five years to get a shot at the publishing pie while their manuscript feeds silverfish at someone's desk.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Bec Allinson said:


> Thanks for linking that, great read! The mathematics part was really interesting, and the part on luck sounds very spot on! The description of 'unlucky' people fit a few that I know to a tee, who always complain about being unlucky!
> 
> Without realising it, I've already followed a bit of it's advice already - I look at really low ranking e-books, or ones that have never sold a single copy, and think about why... I don't just look at the successes.


You're welcome! I loved the WW2 math panel section as well. It's a terrific and interesting piece. Glad you enjoyed it.


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## John Daulton (Feb 28, 2012)

I read all three articles. Very cool way to spend the last half hour or so. Thanks for sharing.

And I do think that KB offers decent exposure to failure, because people do share their experiences, good and bad. And I think survivorship bias can be sort of spotted by the intuitive KBer simply by watching the types of disagreements that break out about things.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

I'll chime in here on the OP's original question about bias:

When the monthly "May Sales," or "April Sales" threads are posted, I see just as many folks talking about selling 10 copies as I do 1,000. I've never counted, but it seems that way at a glance.

So, no, I don't think there is a bias per say.

I think those of us lucky to sell a few more books and do this for a living post more actively than the average. We're not at day jobs.

I would also hope that WC would have a bias. I'm not interested in tips on how not to sell books. I'm not interested in how not to be a success. I want to hear from the people who are winning. I want to know what/how/who or why they did what they did. I want to know lessons learned.

As far as Mr. Coker and his stats go, I believe his sampling is way, way off skewed toward the lower selling indie authors, and here's why:

Once you reach a certain level, Smashwords becomes useless. I don't use it and I don't know very many of the upper tier selling writers who do.
Does H.M.? Lillian? Hugh? Mr. Blake? Elle? If you took Soph's list of indies making a living from writing, how many of her 233 use Smashwords?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a Smashwords hater. I believe they provide a service for indies who don't have the time/energy to go direct to multiple sources. That's cool.

So Mr. Coker's stats mean nothing to me. It is a sampling of people using a service of convenience, not necessity.


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## burke_KB (Jan 28, 2013)

emilycantore said:


> Wendig and Buckell have it wrong and I'm especially surprised at Buckell who took the time to include graphs but didn't follow through.
> 
> What graphs are missing? How about the sales distribution of legacy titles before ePublishing? How about the number of authors "making a living" from book publishing before ePublishing? How about a comparison of authors making a living from ePublishing and traditional?
> 
> ...


I agree with everything you say, but I think his point is more basic. Amada Hocking exploded writing paranormal romance. Tens of thousands of people tried to do the same thing, and we don't hear or see why they failed. We know there aren't tens of thousands of millionaires in her genre, but we don't know why.

A great example is vendor services like Author Solutions. How many writers overpaid for stuff like that, and, because they overpaid, struggled to release more books? Since they make millions, I'm guessing a lot of people have used them. How many broke even? Do 90% lose money?

I'd love more stats on the industry, and I agree we need a real picture that looks at different business models. But the problem is more basic. Those who fail don't take surveys or brag about their mistakes. Meanwhile we have cottage industries popping up offering services, and they promote this idea that anyone can do what Hocking did. All these self-proclaimed gurus create a false sense of the industry, so they can sell more stuff.

Of course, Hugh is the flavor of the month at the moment, but you get my point


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

95% of the 2 million titles in the Kindle store don't sell one copy a day.

I think it's indisputable we've got survivorship bias.


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## NathanWrann (May 5, 2011)

Joe_Nobody said:


> As far as Mr. Coker and his stats go, I believe his sampling is way, way off skewed toward the lower selling indie authors, and here's why:
> 
> Once you reach a certain level, Smashwords becomes useless. I don't use it and I don't know very many of the upper tier selling writers who do.
> Does H.M.? Lillian? Hugh? Mr. Blake? Elle? If you took Soph's list of indies making a living from writing, how many of her 233 use Smashwords?
> ...


Kinda like basing the "unemployment" rate on how many people are collecting benefits rather than how many people are out of work.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Joe Nobody, I'm not saying that survivorship bias is a bad thing, because gee whizz, the boards would be a gloomy place with all that whingeing about lack of sales. But people in general are more likely to share their successes than their failures (which, as I said, is just as well).



> Meanwhile we have cottage industries popping up offering services, and they promote this idea that anyone can do what Hocking did. All these self-proclaimed gurus create a false sense of the industry, so they can sell more stuff.


I do very strongly agree with Emily, and I think there is value in highlighting the fact that Amanda Hocking et al. our outliers and that new writers are better off being more careful with what they spend and on what, or at least be aware that they're far more likely to be in the very long and very low tail, at least when they start. That is the value of these boards.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Success stories got me into self-publishing last year, after many years of frustration trying to get traditionally published. I've earned money and fans as a result, which is more than my writing ever earned being on submission for months at a time. While I do think it's important to read about the failures (to assess why they occur) I'm okay just reading about the successes.

As for his numbers, well, I see naysayers making this mistake all the time. Using the "failures" to illustrate how tough self-publishing is, without saying how tough and competitive traditional publishing is. It's all tough, and it all requires a lot of work. If you don't understand that then you really should rethink your suitability for this profession, or any other profession, for that matter. 

Said my piece. Off to watch Justified.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

There is survivorship bias on KB, and it manifests in different ways. As a group, we pay more attention to those who succeed. You can see that in the focus given to writers like Hugh and Elle, etc. On the flip side, we don't spend a lot of time discussing failure. I find that lack interesting (and somewhat reflective of our modern times [the "everyone is a winner" virus; "Oh, you want to play in the NBA when you grow up? That's great!"]), as history teaches that all the great inventors/creatives spent more time failing than succeeding. Knowing how to fail is a fantastic trait...

In honor of that, I'm going to start a new thread dedicated to sharing failure.


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## burke_KB (Jan 28, 2013)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I'll chime in here on the OP's original question about bias:
> 
> When the monthly "May Sales," or "April Sales" threads are posted, I see just as many folks talking about selling 10 copies as I do 1,000. I've never counted, but it seems that way at a glance.
> 
> ...


I am interested in how not to sell books 

Authors behaving badly is a hot topic. But on a more fundamental level, how much should be invested in editing, design and cover art? What is the likely ROI for these things? Can you spend $30,000 on a book and break even (Based on Sullivan's kickstarter for his Hollow World book.) These are all popular topics, and it would be interesting to see real data correlating small editing budgets to bad reviews, or big art budgets to higher rankings.

For example, all the marketing threads are great examples of studying failure. I love hearing from 3-4 people in my genre, that ads on certain networks are a waste of money. Now I don't need to figure that out myself through trial and error.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Yes, there is survivorship bias on Kboards, but that is because Kboarders are interested in writing the next book. We come back because frankly, I don't know of any site that has better up-to-date self publishing information and helps analyze all the changes that are happening across the sales channels from everyone's collective experience. It's awesome. It's a Borg mind. I love it.

Plenty of new sellers, low sellers, medium, and high post here. Plenty lament the BBOS (brown bar of shame).


Three of my books aren't in Smashwords for distribution, three are. 

I'm hoping there are tons of authors who will only write one or two books and forget about publishing, but Kboard survivors are those who want to keep writing and publishing and hope to build enough of a fan base to make or keep making a living at it.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

I think one thing he is 100% wrong about is that there are one heck of a lot more articles out there about how "self-publishing is the worst" (Salon recently) or that only a rare outlier makes more than one sale or that ebooks are distroying literature (lots of articles in The Guardian) than there articles about how you'll get rich. Frankly, the list of "self-publishing sucks" articles goes on and on and on. The ones who are ignored aren't the ones who sell one copy or the ones like Hugh and Bella who sell millions. The ones in the middle like me who sell a few hundred or a few thousand a  month don't even exist if you read articles like his or any in the MSM. 

I get a bit tired of it, but it's just the reality. Those of us who are just in between rather than being 'best selling authors' or 'never selling anything' just aren't that interesting. I can live with that but I can't say I think it is a realistic or has much to do with survivorship bias.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> You're welcome! I loved the WW2 math panel section as well. It's a terrific and interesting piece. Glad you enjoyed it.


I could see an Out of Time adventure set around that!


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> I could see an Out of Time adventure set around that!


Oh! Si. It's so interesting, I think. Will have to noodle on that!


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> Oh! Si. It's so interesting, I think. Will have to noodle on that!


neato!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Patty Jansen said:


> There are 60,000-something people on this board. Most don't speak up on these threads because they don't have ANYWHERE NEAR those sales, even of people who report Select giveaways of 200 copies, and people who tell everyone I sold only 50 copies this month haha, that's a tenth of what I sold in January.
> 
> There are tons and tons and tons of people who never say that their BBoS never went away for a whole month, or who are happy with one or two sales.


Just a slight correction--KB does indeed have over 60K members (in fact, almost 70K!), but the vast, vast majority of those aren't authors--they're Kindle owners and enthusiasts who have never published a book, nor do they intend to. The last time I checked, out of about 50K members, the number who were discernable to be authors based on posts in the Book Bazaar and the Writers' Café were about 2K.

That doesn't actually change your point, because the number of people really active on any board (or organization) are always a tiny portion of the membership. Out of the almost 70K who are members, fewer than 1000 have 500 posts or more. But we definitely don't have almost 60K author-members here.  Just sayin'.

Continue with your regularly scheduled programming....

Betsy


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## KBoards Admin (Nov 27, 2007)

Both those articles are really fascinating. I would agree with some of the points made above - and specifically that the active authors in this forum are *not* representative of a random sampling of authors. If I recall correctly from my university Stats courses, it's almost impossible to capture a true random sample... the very nature of the selection method tends to introduce bias. 

Relevant to the posts in the WC, we're (obviously) skewed towards people who have an active interest in writing. Not everyone joins online forums - and those who do tend to be the more motivated or passionate pursuers of whatever the forum's subject matter is. 

So there's a self-selection right there that probably has some correlation to the average success rate (if that's discernible) of authors in the WC. 

Of course, then there are the writers like me who are new to the field and looking to learn.

I think a great point made above is that authors in the WC share their unsuccessful moments as well as their successes, and there's something to be learned from both types of experiences.


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## hs (Feb 15, 2011)

Joe_Nobody said:


> When the monthly "May Sales," or "April Sales" threads are posted, I see just as many folks talking about selling 10 copies as I do 1,000. I've never counted, but it seems that way at a glance.


Maybe it's _my own bias_, but I feel like most people sell more books every month than I do, which is what prompted me to post the original question. I was just wondering how many people here are in the same boat as I am.



Joe_Nobody said:


> I think those of us lucky to sell a few more books and do this for a living post more actively than the average. We're not at day jobs.


That's a really good point. I work a full time day job (which is why I haven't been back to this thread in hours), and I'd post more if I didn't. I also know that the day job is the reason why I haven't written more than I do, which I've determined is the most reliable path to success from reading the posts here.

As always, you guys offered great insights in response to my original post, which is why I like hanging out here despite being at the tail end of that sales chart.


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

Here's what I'm interested in, and what Buckell doesn't tell me and Coker's charts don't show.

These charts show books. JUST individual books. Everybody's drawer manuscript that's been pulled out and put up on KDP, and the mega-selling previously published backlists, and everybody in between. It's just books, not segregated in any way. (And we don't know how this being Smashwords data skews the results. Smashwords may be a better sampling of what's totally available as ebooks, or it may be less useful, because Amazon is clearly selling more books right now. I don't know how to find this data, so I'm going to assume right now that these SW charts are completely true for all ebooks across the board.)

What I need to see is: what happens with a writer's second book. What percentage of writers don't put up a second work? How would we find this out? I don't know. I *do* know that lots of novelists and lots of screenwriters write one thing...and then work on that thing until it's near death, and they never work on thing 2.

Now what happens if we analyze the performance of writers with three books out? There's probably not as huge a % dropoff between 2 and 3, but I don't know this for sure. I do know that writers with 3 books have continued for whatever reason -- finding their voice, writing a series, because no one has taken away their access to Scrivener.

Now what's the data for Book 4? How are THOSE writers doing? Here we have a career in motion. I'm absolutely willing to bet that we're going to see a bell curve in performance now: still a smaller number at the high end, but a greater number of books doing better (and writers who are doing better). At this point, it's worth looking at other things: genre, covers, promotion.

At book 5, these charts are TOTALLY USELESS.

Every screenwriter I know in Hollywood had AT LEAST eight completed screenplays before they hit it. The ones who said it was their first lied. I am willing to bet numbers are similar with self-publishing. (She says, looking at her own signature.)

Looking at the data about unsorted masses of books is useless. And that tells me nothing, good or bad, about "making it" as a writer.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Just a slight correction--KB does indeed have over 60K members (in fact, almost 70K!), but the vast, vast majority of those aren't authors--they're Kindle owners and enthusiasts who have never published a book, nor do they intend to. The last time I checked, out of about 50K members, the number who were discernable to be authors based on posts in the Book Bazaar and the Writers' Café were about 2K.
> 
> That doesn't actually change your point, because the number of people really active on any board (or organization) are always a tiny portion of the membership. Out of the almost 70K who are members, fewer than 1000 have 500 posts or more. But we definitely don't have almost 60K author-members here.  Just sayin'.
> 
> ...


Interesting point, Betsy - I've wondered on that one. There seems to be sooo many authors here, I can't keep up with the names, but it's true that even a few hundred author names would be a load to keep up with.

On topic, one of the main reasons this board is so good is that the authors who've been wildly successful seem to stick around and share what they've learned. A 'beginners' board might be more average of most indie authors, but I for one, wouldn't want to spend time on one, because I find the shared knowledge here far more useful. And the people here are cooler


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Just a slight correction--KB does indeed have over 60K members (in fact, almost 70K!), but the vast, vast majority of those aren't authors--they're Kindle owners and enthusiasts who have never published a book, nor do they intend to. The last time I checked, out of about 50K members, the number who were discernable to be authors based on posts in the Book Bazaar and the Writers' Café were about 2K.
> 
> That doesn't actually change your point, because the number of people really active on any board (or organization) are always a tiny portion of the membership. Out of the almost 70K who are members, fewer than 1000 have 500 posts or more. But we definitely don't have almost 60K author-members here.  Just sayin'.
> 
> ...


Oh great-one from the land of Mod and master of the WC Klingon Pain Stick;

Any chance you can tell how many of the 2K authors mentioned above have 100 posts or more?

It would be interesting to apply stats from Soph's thread of indie writers (233 I believe) making a living to how many writers in the WC that are active.

If anyone wants to start an office pool, I'll go in for $1 that the number is 18%.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

valeriec80 said:


> ....
> Never give up. Never surrender. Always believe that you are the special s***flake that can do what most everyone else can't. _That_ is how you succeed. Just keep at it until they can't ignore you.


NEVER SURREEEEENNNNDERRRRRR


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## heavycat (Feb 14, 2011)

There is a culture on the Internet formed by the preponderance of analytical personalities. They obsessively try to drain the soul from everything and turn all human experience into math. There is no room in their worldview for inspiration or intuition or emotion in general for that matter. Some people call it "scientism" where the scientific method graduates from analysis methodology to "way of life." They can't just let anything "be." It must be reduced to numbers or it is declared non-existent.

Most of their sentences start with "actually" and they passive-aggressively contradict just about everything that comes out of the mouth of someone who is not them. Conversations are usually brief because trying to talk to someone who will spend sixteen solid minutes explaining why you are wrong is not something most people are prepared to tolerate.

I follow the basic law: human behavior cannot be mathematically modeled. Watch this video. Then go write your story.


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## H.M. Ward (May 16, 2012)

Failure is part of success. To say we're blind to it is a little insulting. I don't know about you, but I'm not sitting on the porch waiting for Publisher's Clearing House to bring me a check. I think the odds of getting struck my lightening multiple times is better. Which reminds me to get off the damn porch. Failure and success go together. How many times did the Dilbert guy fail before he created Dilbert? He had a blog post on it a while back. The number was up there, which gets you into numbers.

I dont buy the smoke and mirrors bit that the publishing industry is fickle and no one knows what will happen with X book. *insert ghostly noises here* It's not magic, well parts of it are not magic. For example, a writer will make a better living by capturing 1% of the romance market rather than as capturing 1% of the Young Adult PNR Dystopian market. Can you ask for a smaller piece of the pie? I love that genre btw but writing every single title I put out in that genre isnt too smart if I want to eat and stuff. I kicked myself for writing such a huge series in that area. I spent over a year writing nothing but YA PRND. That's not a bread and butter genre. If you want steady income streams, chose genres that support them.

I also tend to think it's prudent to keep a close eye on the successful wallflowers. The successful people who aren't screaming_ look at me _are worth looking at very closely. A swimming man makes less waves than a drowning dude, and all that. Just sayin'.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Oh great-one from the land of Mod and master of the WC Klingon Pain Stick;
> 
> Any chance you can tell how many of the 2K authors mentioned above have 100 posts or more?


 

No.*

Betsy


*I sorted the BB by poster, and then paged through about half the pages counting individual names, then extrapolated from that. Same with the WC for comparison purposes. Some authors only have BB posts, and some posters in the WC don't have BB threads. That was as hard as I was willing to work--but the same information is available to anyone else who is interested. Go to the BB (or Cafe) and click on "Started by" to sort by poster. You're welcome to go through the names and see how many posts they have. Or, go through all members (click on "members" in the blue menu bar at the top of every KB page) and then pick out the authors by name, sorted by number of posts.

Have fun!


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Dalya said:


> NEVER SURREEEEENNNNDERRRRRR


Fixed that for you, Dalya.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

hs said:


> I came across this article today about survivorship bias when it comes to what you read about self publishing: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2013/05/27/survivorship-bias-why-90-of-the-advice-about-writing-is-[bullcrap]-right-now/
> 
> It made me wonder if the typical poster on KBoards is on the successful end of the spectrum or really representative of the "average" indie authors. Based on the all of the advice I've been reading, I suspect that the active participants on these boards are savvier than average and tend to be the ones who work hard at making publishing a successful endeavor instead of giving up when their one and only book fails to sell. But, judging from the posts where selling hundreds of copies of books per month is normal, I also suspect that the authors who follow the advice on these boards but don't sell aren't as visible, so we get a skewed view of what "average" looks like.


The people who post on KB are a self-selected sample. There is no reason to think they are representative of the larger population of independent authors. They are an unreliable sample.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> The people who post on KB are a self-selected sample. There is no reason to think they are representative of the larger population of independent authors. They are an unreliable sample.


And I can only speak for myself, but when I look relatively successful here, it's because you don't see the 20 years when I was a sad sack, struggling to produce in the face of constant rejection.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

The graphs in the article are interesting. But I think they have been developed from all the books in the Smashwords catalog. Nothing wrong with that. But there might be something wrong with using those graphs to gauge the prospects of success for any given book.

For example, suppose we looked at the subset of books subjected to proof reading by someone other than the author. What percentage of the total would that represent? How would the same graphs look when applied only to those books? 

What if we looked at the subset of books where the author had written more than one book? How would the graphs look when applied to that group?

Stats developed over the entire population are valuable when analyzing the entire population. But they rarely do much good when analyzing the prospects for any single member of that population.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Terrence OBrien said:


> [The people who post on KB] are an unreliable sample.


*bites tongue*


Betsy


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

So here's a joke that comments on the matter:

There was this helicopter with a pilot and passenger on board and they were lost in the fog somewhere around Seattle.  The GPS was out, and so was the radio, and they had no idea where they were.  Then up out of the fog loomed a tall city building.  They flew in close and hovered and they could see people inside.  The pilot told the passenger to write up a sign to ask "WHERE ARE WE?" and hold it up so the people in the building could see it.

The people inside the building squinted at the sign, and then hurried around to make up a sign of their own.  They wrote it out and held it up to the window: "YOU'RE IN A HELICOPTER."

The pilot gave them the thumbs up and flew right off -- straight to Seattle Airport, without any trouble at all.

As they walked away from the copter, the passenger turned to pilot and said, "How on earth did that tell you where we were?"

"Simple," said the pilot.  "The answer was accurate but not helpful... so that must have been the Microsoft Tech Support building in Redmond!"

*****

The idea that any forum, but especially KB, has a "survivor bias" is very much like being told we're in a helicopter.  It's true of every club, every institution, every organization, every forum.  And it is most especially true of the profession of writing.  (Or art, or entrepreneurship, or restauranteur.)

The sorting out of members of any group is so basic to the concept of entrepreneurship, you can hardly call it a bias.  It's actually a correction against a bad data set in the first place:  For instance, the life span of some insects, or maybe even sea turtles.  If they survive infancy, they have a certain measurable lifespan. But if you include all the eggs laid, or even hatched, that drags the actual average down to a low number which doesn't actually reflect the normal life-cycle, in that the vast majority of the species either dies much earlier, or lives much longer.

The idea that successful people speak up more is actually a different bias.  (And it isn't just about success.  People who feel they've been done wrong also tend to speak up more -- so there is a bias toward conspiracy theories too.)

I've been in a lot of groups where the success/complaint bias has been extremely strong, and you can usually demonstrate it with polls and such.  But I've never been able to catch this group in the level of bias you find in others.  That's partly because self-publishing is more complex than some of the other places I've been, but it's also because it seems like HERE, people speak up a little more.

Not a lot, often just a little whine "I've only had four sales this month!" or something like that.  And nobody here treats a person who says that like they're unusual.  People make suggestions if asked, or they commiserate.  As often as not, you get other people saying (without giving numbers) "My sales are down too." (While others say "Hey, MY sales are way up!")

What I like, though, is that there is a large variety of "success" levels among people who actually report things here.  And people talk to each other in private too.  This ISN'T a place where people go around setting specific goal posts, like saying that if you have X number of books you should be making XXXX amount per month.  Everybody here knows and says often; EVERYTHING VARIES.

So saying that this group demonstrates "survivor bias" may be technically accurate, but it is not actually useful.  And it's more a reflection of the writing profession as a whole than it is of this particular place.

Camille


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## kurzon (Feb 26, 2011)

Well, I will agree with Buckell on the point that trying to dictate someone else's choices is pointless. Unless a trade author asks for info about self-publishing, I don't see that it's good manners trying to shove self-publishing down said author's throat. Trade publishing can be the better choice, and there is no absolute guarantee that more money will be made via self-publishing, or that a higher return is the only factor in a decision. And, certainly, anyone who thinks self-publishing is a guarantee of a large amount of money is having a particularly Pollyanna moment.

But whenever these articles from trade published authors who happen to have done a little self-publishing come up, I shake my head because they're comparing apples and oranges.

For a large percentage of people, it is not a question of which is more beneficial: self-publishing or trade publishing. It is a question of self-publishing and not being published at all. Or spending years/decades submitting, finally getting one novel published, and not selling enough to be 'worth' publishing again. Or going down the midlist spiral until you've reached the point where your dedicated fans are dying for your next book, but the return isn't worthwhile for a trade publisher.

Certainly, for any successful trade published author who is satisfied with their current return and future prospects, it is possible/probable that they're not realistically going to make much more/any more than they do with a trade publisher. But where is the "survivorship bias" in being able to get published at all?

[Also, in relationship to the follow up interview, I've never understood this implication that self-publishing means you will magically stop growing/improving as a writer.]


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Lots of interesting points here.

I have to admit that when I read the article, I thought: OK, here we have another writer who's had a go at self-publishing, found that it's hard work and that million-dollar successes were had by writers who were not him, and felt the need to blast this all over the interwebs.

Yawn.

He does have some very valid points, but I also think that self-publishing has a lot of non-monetary benefits that are part of success but that are not quantifiable. And not only will it be different for every person, but different for every stage in a writer's career.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

holly w. said:


> I dont buy the smoke and mirrors bit that the publishing industry is fickle and no one knows what will happen with X book. *insert ghostly noises here* It's not magic, well parts of it are not magic. For example, a writer will make a better living by capturing 1% of the romance market rather than as capturing 1% of the Young Adult PNR Dystopian market. Can you ask for a smaller piece of the pie? I love that genre btw but writing every single title I put out in that genre isnt too smart if I want to eat and stuff. I kicked myself for writing such a huge series in that area. I spent over a year writing nothing but YA PRND. That's not a bread and butter genre. If you want steady income streams, chose genres that support them.


Respectfully, while it might be demonstrably true that more people read contemporary romance than read paranormal romance, (right now, anyway. PNR has been hugely successful in the past), it does not necessarily mean that switching genres from PNR to contemporary romance will mean that an author will make more money.

In your case, it seems to have worked that way.

But the amount of people who have done similar things to what you have done and who have not seen your level of success far outweighs your experience, to the point of making it all, yes, impossible to predict, smoke and mirrors, like picking lottery tickets, like rolling the dice.

It may be a valid strategy to see what genre is hot and then jump on the bandwagon, but long term it would mean a career of whiplash and trend-chasing, because what is hot now will not be hot later. On the other hand, authors who have well-built followings seem to be able to command readership regardless of how hot their genre is at the moment. I am burnt out on vampires, but I will read another book about Lestat by Anne Rice if she happens to write one. Horror is one of the most unpopular genres right now, but Stephen King books still command massive numbers. Honestly, I think it's far more likely that Holly is successful because she found readers who like her style--her special sauce--than because she wrote in a certain genre. That genre, a bookbub ad, and a bit of luck may have got her first book to the top of the charts _once_, but she debuts there again and again because she's demonstrated to a lot of readers that she will satisfy what they want, and so they'll come back for more of what she does.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> *bites tongue*
> 
> 
> Betsy


A statistically reliable sample is representative of the larger population. Self-selected samples are unreliable as accurate representations because they have not been randomly selected from the larger population. The self-selection greatly reduces the probability of getting a representative sample.

So I agree with the OP's speculation that KB posters don't represent the average.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Isn't it somewhat offset by those who do well and disappear?

1,000 more books, and I'm done with this place.

(But seriously, a good thread and question)


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Heavycat, you win the Internet. This is the honest truth. Thanks for posting it.



heavycat said:


> There is a culture on the Internet formed by the preponderance of analytical personalities. They obsessively try to drain the soul from everything and turn all human experience into math. There is no room in their worldview for inspiration or intuition or emotion in general, for that matter. Some people call it "scientism," where the scientific method graduates from analysis methodology to "way of life." They can't just let anything "be." It must be reduced to numbers, or it is declared non-existent.
> 
> Most of their sentences start with "actually," and they passive-aggressively contradict just about everything that comes out of the mouth of someone who is not them. Conversations are usually brief because trying to talk to someone who will spend sixteen solid minutes explaining why you are wrong is not something most people are prepared to tolerate.
> 
> I follow the basic law: human behavior cannot be mathematically modeled. Watch this video. Then go write your story.


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

Hmm, according to the article's logic, wouldn't anyone who's been traditionally published be a 'survivor', and not someone we should pay much attention to? If you drew a chart of all those who've tried to be traditionally published, and the money they made at it, what would it look like? I know the 'long tail' would be dead flat against the x axis, representing all those who made $0. in traditional publishing.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Terrence OBrien said:


> A statistically reliable sample is representative of the larger population. Self-selected samples are unreliable as accurate representations because they have not been randomly selected from the larger population. The self-selection greatly reduces the probability of getting a representative sample.
> 
> So I agree with the OP's speculation that KB posters don't represent the average.


Well, my comment had nothing to do with statistics.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Well, my comment had nothing to do with statistics.


Ok. Mine was limited to statistics.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Ok. Mine was limited to statistics.


Yes, Terrence, I realized that...


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

ElisaBlaisdell said:


> Hmm, according to the article's logic, wouldn't anyone who's been traditionally published be a 'survivor', and not someone we should pay much attention to? If you drew a chart of all those who've tried to be traditionally published, and the money they made at it, what would it look like? I know the 'long tail' would be dead flat against the x axis, representing all those who made $0. in traditional publishing.


This is a point I bring up all the time (but it still hasn't caught on). All the people who submitted to the slush pile and never got out of it ARE PART OF THE TRADITIONAL PATH. You have to count them, factor them in, add them to your analysis. That's a bunch of people who sell zero copies and make zero dollars and give up on writing. Putting our long tail on a chart and pretending these people don't exist is asinine.


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## Hopeful Writer (Jul 24, 2012)

I think there is definitely a WC survivorship bias, and I think it's a good thing! 
Newbies learn from authors who share their experiences here and become not-so-clueless. And then they apply those words of wisdom to their own work and have their own experiences to share - and the cycle repeats itself.

Yay for Kindleboards survivorship bias


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Hugh Howey said:


> This is a point I bring up all the time (but it still hasn't caught on). All the people who submitted to the slush pile and never got out of it ARE PART OF THE TRADITIONAL PATH. You have to count them, factor them in, add them to your analysis. That's a bunch of people who sell zero copies and make zero dollars and give up on writing. Putting our long tail on a chart and pretending these people don't exist is asinine.


Exactly. Any book queried to an agent or submitted to a publisher is actively in the market. The books are being offered for sale to agents and publishers. They are definitely part of the population of traditional books. They are in the market. The slush pile was the long tail long before eBooks existed. It still is.


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## hs (Feb 15, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> (But seriously, a good thread and question)


Ha! I have validation from Hugh Howey! That's all I really wanted when I started this thread. I'm going to retire now.


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## Writerly Writer (Jul 19, 2012)

hs said:


> Ha! I have validation from Hugh Howey! That's all I really wanted when I started this thread. I'm going to retire now.


Ooooh you must be doing something right HS. You must be on the road to 'success' if you elicited a reply from Hugh.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

KJCOLT said:


> Ooooh you must be doing something right HS. You must be on the road to 'success' if you elicited a reply from Hugh.


Nah. The reply has survivorship bias, sorry.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

heavycat said:


> There is a culture on the Internet formed by the preponderance of analytical personalities. They obsessively try to drain the soul from everything and turn all human experience into math. There is no room in their worldview for inspiration or intuition or emotion in general for that matter. Some people call it "scientism" where the scientific method graduates from analysis methodology to "way of life." They can't just let anything "be." It must be reduced to numbers or it is declared non-existent.
> 
> Most of their sentences start with "actually" and they passive-aggressively contradict just about everything that comes out of the mouth of someone who is not them. Conversations are usually brief because trying to talk to someone who will spend sixteen solid minutes explaining why you are wrong is not something most people are prepared to tolerate.
> 
> I follow the basic law: human behavior cannot be mathematically modeled. Watch this video. Then go write your story.


I'm a huge baseball fan. My particular fandom has led me to a lot of sites that use sabermetrics--very in-depth, geeky stats, often invented by outsiders--to explore and analyze the game. Since they tend to focus on the purely quantifiable, such as a batter's on-base percentage or his swing percentage on balls in the strike zone, these writers are regularly accused of being blind to everything beyond the numbers, of having no true love of or understanding for the game.

I've never understood this. Many statheads thought and wrote about baseball for years without any hope of making money from it. They did it because they live and breathe baseball.

Fandom takes many forms. It's pretty arrogant to think that someone who'd rather explore a subject through math, stats, and analysis doesn't love it just as much as you do.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

Zelah Meyer said:


> Well, those who persist are going to do a better job of surviving - and a sense of community can help encourage you to persist. So yes, I'd expect that Kindleboards authors do skew the average a bit.
> 
> There is definitely a 'favoured approach' on the boards - exactly what that is morphs over time. However, there are lots of different approaches & the trick is reading the boards, reading blogs, reading books, and working out what fits with who you are and what you want to achieve.





emilycantore said:


> Wendig and Buckell have it wrong and I'm especially surprised at Buckell who took the time to include graphs but didn't follow through.
> 
> What graphs are missing? How about the sales distribution of legacy titles before ePublishing? How about the number of authors "making a living" from book publishing before ePublishing? How about a comparison of authors making a living from ePublishing and traditional?
> 
> ...


I. Love. This. I know you're new but so am I and you are asking all the right questions.

In my mind: take what you like and leave the rest.


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## John Daulton (Feb 28, 2012)

emilycantore said:


> Wendig and Buckell have it wrong and I'm especially surprised at Buckell who took the time to include graphs but didn't follow through.
> 
> What graphs are missing? How about the sales distribution of legacy titles before ePublishing? How about the number of authors "making a living" from book publishing before ePublishing? How about a comparison of authors making a living from ePublishing and traditional?
> 
> ...


This is a solid post.

It's so easy to fall in love with a really cool idea like "survivorship bias." I mean, just writing that gives us the little red squiggly line and we get to ignore it because of how cool it is. We, as writers, know that it's okay to ignore the squiggly red line, which means it's even more cool. But, as much as I agree that there is a lot of value in thinking about this idea, I applaud Emilycantore for her post (and F.M. Hopkins for shining the light on it). It is more complex than the alluringly simple counter-idea of "survivorship bias."

If emulating "survivors" were a bad idea, where would we be? Caveman 1 threw a sharpened stick at an antelope and had dinner later. Caveman 2 threw two pinecones and a starfish at an antelope, and he and his family died of starvation. Yes, it's probably cool to know about that pinecone-starfish thing, but, well, probably more value in just sharpening a stick if it comes down to it.


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## Shane Murray (Aug 1, 2012)

"Making a living off art is hard.

But that isn’t a sexy sell."

Love this.


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## journeymama (May 30, 2011)

When I read the article, my first thought was that trad publishing has a HUGE survivorship bias. Just think about what you think about when yu think of books- you think of what you see on the store shelves in Barnes and Noble, or out on the tables, on in the Bestselling Lists. That's what I thought- I never took the time to think it through... I didn't realize that those people had already made it- they not only won the acceptance gauntlet but were getting a ton of marketing support. I think the difference with self publishing is that you can hear more from those who are not making it. (Yet.)


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> why 90% of the advice about writing is bullshit right now


Mr. Buckell has forgotten Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is shit."

Obviously there's a bias to KB, but I don't think that makes this place unrepresentational or has much to do with the viability of indie publishing in general.

The board probably isn't representative of anyone who vomits forth something onto KDP or Smashwords, but I do think it's representative of serious indie publishers. Sane reasoning people who are able to write and willing to approach indie publishing in a serious way and treat it as a profession.

There's a lot of people out there who don't approach this seriously and will come and go. Not because indie publishing isn't viable, but because they're not. They are interested in their _ART_ and won't bend it to current trends. Or they are arrogant and "know" that they don't care about covers, therefore nobody does and they don't need one that doesn't look like it was done in MS Paint. The ones who post month after month about how they're not having success and month after month get the same advice that they reject. The people who can't upload a doc to KDP or they find out they're going to have to pay self employment taxes and bail right then. The ones who aren't writers at all, but just online get rick quick types. Let's also not forget our favorite: someone who can't spell or use basic grammar. These people aren't going to make it and yes they drop out. I don't see that as really an issue.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

valeriec80 said:


> I think the problem is thinking there are any rules to success. Like this bias thing assumes that you can figure out how to be successful by studying successes AND failures, not just successes. But in truth, there is no way at all to know what will be successful and what won't. There are some commonalities, but there are just as many frustrating anomalies. It is pointless to try.
> 
> But then, I feel like I post this like every three days here, so maybe I'm turning into a broken record.
> 
> ...


Well said.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Rykymus said:


> I will never understand why anyone cares about all these different people rambling on giving their opinions about this that and the other thing. What makes this guy's opinion special over any other person out there? It's all just a bunch of "Look at me! I'm successful so you should respect what I think! And oh, by the way, buy my book!" It's all just marketing garbage. It's all just a way to get us to click on his article and garner some attention for himself in order to sell books. I never heard of this guy until today, and I don't care what he or anyone else has to say about the industry. It's all just yakkity yak, and it means absolutely nothing. Just another way of waving your arms and yelling "Look at me! Look at me!" Yet we all act is if it has meaning and value, which it really doesn't. He hasn't said anything at all that hasn't been said a million times over in the past.
> 
> I miss the craft threads.


Again, well said.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> Those of us who are just in between rather than being 'best selling authors' or 'never selling anything' just aren't that interesting.


Ever since Hugh's article on Salon, I think there's been a bit (just a bit mind you) more interest in the middle ground players. Does it make for as interesting an article as the spectacular successes (or failures)? No, but I've seen a few copycat articles pop up in the last month discussing that middle ground: the people who make decent money but aren't going to be driving a solid gold Ferrari anytime soon.

Even if that small interest wanes (which I don't doubt it'll do) that's not so bad. Sure I won't have the media beating a path to my door if I make $5 or 10k in a month. At the same time, that doesn't make the bills I can pay any less real. 

As for the main post of this thread, yep I definitely think there's a bit of survivor bias here...but it's good in an encouraging way. How many people have been seen here who go from "Hi, this is my first post ever" to "Wow, I just made $XXXX, thanks for all the cool support!" in a short time? It's a decent amount, so I'd say if there is survivor bias here, it's just because this group as a whole is making more survivors.


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## ElHawk (Aug 13, 2012)

Monique said:


> Is there survivorship bias on KBoards?
> 
> Oodles of it.
> 
> ...


Very cool article! However, I think while survivorship bias exists everywhere (it's an artifact of the human mind, like pareidolia or confirmation bias), there is probably less of it on Kboards than in other places where writing and publishing are discussed. The users here are pretty diligent about sharing what doesn't work. In fact, I was going to start a thread this morning about something that didn't work for me and see what others' experiences with it were, but I read this article and now I'm out of time and have to go to work. So...later today.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> This is a point I bring up all the time (but it still hasn't caught on). All the people who submitted to the slush pile and never got out of it ARE PART OF THE TRADITIONAL PATH. You have to count them, factor them in, add them to your analysis. That's a bunch of people who sell zero copies and make zero dollars and give up on writing. Putting our long tail on a chart and pretending these people don't exist is asinine.


Couldnt agree more. Anyone who's made it the traditional way is speaking with a survivorship bias.

I'd go one step further as well. It's not just that they'll make no money. They'll spend money on conferences, conventions and writing classes. Things that are likely to cost far more than producing an ebook. When people talk of cults and snake oil salesmen who encourage hopefuls to spend money on self publishing, they ignore the costs of chasing the traditional dream.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Great thread, very interesting. I would add that those who publish their one book expecting great things without putting any effort into it, will probably never find this board. Those of us who do, and I admit to coming in late, truly want to gather all the information they can on how to be successful.

As well, the statistics just don't show how many books will never make it no matter what the author does, such as certain subjects that there simply isn't a market for.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

From my personal point of view, when I started, all of the success stories from indie writers provided two things for me:

1) That success was possible.
2) How it was achieved.

I certainly didn't look at their stories and think all I had to do was to self-publish a book and I'd be rich. And I also didn't think that their stories were typical of indie writers.

From the blog post:



> In an interview recently, David Kirtley pointed out that in business school there's this point made that if you interview rich people who have won the lottery, you might come to believe that playing the lottery is the only way to become rich.


Yeah, if you're an idiot. I think people are smarter than that, and understand that these self-publishing success stories are newsworthy because they're unsual, and not the norm.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

To restate the concept without the math, people repeat to each other until it's no longer questioned, "The cream will eventually rise to the top." or, "Every book eventually finds its readership." (That would be the echo chamber.)  But there is no way to prove or disprove that theory because if there are gallons of cream sloshing around at the bottom, there is no way to ever know it.  You can assume that if it won't rise, it must not be cream, but you could be wrong.  Success requires a good, if not great book (and many books increase your odds) PLUS an effective way to get it noticed PLUS some luck.  It's additive.  You have to have all three elements.  It's never only luck, or only quality or only marketing tricks.  The harder you work on the writing and the marketing the more likely you make it that luck will strike, but you still need some luck.  It is thus in many other professions too.  Go forth and get lucky.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

ElHawk said:


> Very cool article! However, I think while survivorship bias exists everywhere (it's an artifact of the human mind, like pareidolia or confirmation bias), there is probably less of it on Kboards than in other places where writing and publishing are discussed. The users here are pretty diligent about sharing what doesn't work. In fact, I was going to start a thread this morning about something that didn't work for me and see what others' experiences with it were, but I read this article and now I'm out of time and have to go to work. So...later today.


Yes, as illustrated in the McRaney article, it's a common thing found in all businesses and aspects of life. The original article is really more of the same indie v trad stuff with its own biases. Meh. As others have pointed out there is survivorship bias up the wazoo on both sides when attempting to defend or attack one position or another. For me, the interesting stuff was really in the McRaney article.


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

He's calling it "survivorship bias", but really the correct term is an older one--well-known to psychologists, sociologists, historians, and economists--called *confirmation bias*.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Simply put: most people will pluck data points or experiences that back up a perceived reality or set of opinions.

Bob's opinion of the far right is supported by the guy down the street that likes to hang his flag upside down in protest of the current administration. Jane thinks that all democrats are belligerent and fanatic, based on a coworker who won't shut up for hours anytime someone brings up Obama in a negative light. Marcus is convinced SUV's attract maniacs--he sees them weaving in and out of traffic without their turn signals on all the time.

And so it goes.

In this sense, Tobias is right: most people can and do cull through our years on this planet looking for evidence that supports our world view--or, more importantly--validates our identity.

What the article lacks is a greater emphasis on just how hard it is to become trade published--I speak from former experience, as I'm sure he does as well--and an understanding that there's more to being self-published than just selling books, and in some ways the ebook phenomenon is a thing of paradigm shifts.

Finally--he sort of alludes to this, but I wish he'd gone deeper--what these articles need to do more often is encourage people to be happy with themselves even if they don't go on to great success or selling tons of books. There are a too many people out there--trade publishing or otherwise--staking their sense of self-worth on if they become THE NEXT BIG NAME or not. That's not being fair to themselves.


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## jnfr (Mar 26, 2011)

My thoughts when I read this article were similar to Hugh's and journeymama's from last evening: that writers like Buckell and Wendig have their confirmation bias already built in, because they're inside the hurdle of being traditionally published. They don't include all the traditionally unpublished writers in their calculations about what success is possible. They take their inner circle and compare it to the wider circle of self-publishers, and think that self-publishers have a harder time succeeding. As someone who battered the doors of traditional publishing for years, it doesn't look that way to me.

Then, after reading through this thread, I wanted to add that I'm one of those who sells almost nothing. I have very little material for sale at this time. I occasionally mention this in sales threads just for balance, but don't bother mostly since it's obvious.

And I still don't consider myself a failure. Because for the first time in over a decade (closing on two decades) I'm writing fiction again, and that's a goal I've wanted to accomplish for a very long time. I am slow and clumsy because fiction is still really hard for me, but every week I sit down and write some more, and for me that's a success.

I'll have more published eventually, and it may sell or it may not. Maybe I'll get a couple more fan letters, which mean the world to me. But on my own terms, I've already succeeded. 

Trying to get published traditionally killed my interest in writing fiction. Seeing the potential in self-publishing brought it to life again. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Rick Gualtieri said:


> Ever since Hugh's article on Salon, I think there's been a bit (just a bit mind you) more interest in the middle ground players. Does it make for as interesting an article as the spectacular successes (or failures)? No, but I've seen a few copycat articles pop up in the last month discussing that middle ground: the people who make decent money but aren't going to be driving a solid gold Ferrari anytime soon.
> 
> Even if that small interest wanes (which I don't doubt it'll do) that's not so bad. Sure I won't have the media beating a path to my door if I make $5 or 10k in a month. At the same time, that doesn't make the bills I can pay any less real.
> 
> As for the main post of this thread, yep I definitely think there's a bit of survivor bias here...but it's good in an encouraging way. How many people have been seen here who go from "Hi, this is my first post ever" to "Wow, I just made $XXXX, thanks for all the cool support!" in a short time? It's a decent amount, so I'd say if there is survivor bias here, it's just because this group as a whole is making more survivors.


I agree. My bills get paid whether anyone writes articles on it or not. I think the subject relates to the original post though because the whole subject is a lot more complex than that post implies. There are a lot of people who post less than Best Seller information. He might well consider us "failures" or whatever term he wants to use. I don't because, as you point out, those bills are getting paid. And yes, Hugh's article did shine some light on the fact that there are a number of selling levels.

But I also think the author is simply wrong about people not posting when things don't work or when they aren't selling. There are plenty of "why aren't I selling" threads and some "I'm giving up now" threads as well as huge threads on what does and doesn't work in paid advertising and Select giveaways. Most of us have posted when we advertised with XXX and got ZERO sales from it, because sharing information is what a lot of us come here to do, not brag about our sales.

Anyway, in all endeavors there is to some degree a preference for saying we succeeded so sure there may be some survivorship bias, but not nearly as much as he says, at least not here. Exactly where he is talking about, I don't know.

ETA: And he seemed to be pretending it was a straight up choice between self-publishing and going out to knock on a publishers door to be traditionally published. A lot of us here know that isn't the case. I think the year after I signed with an agent who wasn't managing to sell my novel was the most disheartening of my entire life. Ugh.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

jnfr said:


> Trying to get published traditionally killed my interest in writing fiction. Seeing the potential in self-publishing brought it to life again. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.


You're not. Great points.

Occasionally, I hear people argue that the traditional process and rejections that come with it made them a better writer. That wasnt my experience. It made me a frustrated one. Knowing I have at least a decent chance to get my work in front of eyeballs interested in reading it is very motivating and empowering.


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## John Daulton (Feb 28, 2012)

Adam Pepper said:


> You're not. Great points.
> 
> Occasionally, I hear people argue that the traditional process and rejections that come with it made them a better writer. That wasnt my experience. It made me a frustrated one. Knowing I have at least a decent chance to get my work in front of eyeballs interested in reading it is very motivating and empowering.


I agree. It is awesome to be able to take at least some control over your destiny. I spent a lot of time trying the trad route too, and I was frustrated as well. I don't hate on trad at all, and I would happily look at any opportunity that came along for that. But it wasn't working for me a year and a half ago (or the ten years prior), so I'm glad I had an option.


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## Katherine Roberts (Apr 4, 2013)

Patty Jansen said:


> If you start talking to currently-published authors, you'll have a hard time finding an author who will complain that sales are crap, their publisher is not buying their next series, and none of the books they sold ever earned out their advance.
> It's the nature of people. If they can't brag, most people say nothing at all.


I think this is less because authors like to brag, but because any whiff of "failure" (or non-success) tends to put readers off buying their books. I have many published author friends, and there's a fair amount of complaining goes on behind closed doors when we get together! But in public, we are expected to play the same smoke and mirrors game as our publishers - it's even written into some of our contracts - and any career-minded author will do their best to play that game as well and as long as they can.

Before social media, it didn't matter quite so much. Those who sold modestly never got invited to speak at book festivals etc, so the publishing "non-successes" could be swept under the carpet, and authors who did not make enough profit quietly dropped from their publisher's lists. Meanwhile, the media picks up on the (very rare) success story, making everyone who doesn't know how publishing works think those successes are the norm... I know my mum is still slightly puzzled why I am not as rich as JK Rowling, since I write children's books!

The Society of Authors did an interesting survey of their members about 10 years ago, and found that average earnings (adjusted mean, I think) from writing were around £4,000 per year. Not sure what that is in dollars, but nowhere near as much as some people here seem to be earning from their indie-published books.

And here's a more recent one:
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/new-research-confirms-uk-writers-still-struggle-to-survive-156139775.html 

The divide between mega-success and scraping pennies off the floor seems to be getting wider all the time.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

The other flaw to this article and every one like it is they presuppose there is a choice.  Most writers, and virtually all beginning writers dont get to choose between self, trad or hybrid.  In almost every case, the choice the beginning writer has is self publish or dont publish at all.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "Success requires a good, if not great book (and many books increase your odds) PLUS an effective way to get it noticed PLUS some luck


. "

Does that mean both _DaVinci Code_ and _50 Shades_ were good or great books? I think DVC was very good, but I know many here disagree. Didn't read 50, but i know many here look down on it. Both books were huge successes.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Does that mean both _DaVinci Code_ and _50 Shades_ were good or great books? I think DVC was very good, but I know many here disagree. Didn't read 50, but i know many here look down on it. Both books were huge successes.


My take is that they were good in some ways and bad in others... And that even if I don't think they were good, enough people sure did!

As for the topic - I completely agree with everything said in this thread! Really interesting discussion - especially the point that the "long tail" applies to traditional publishing, too, in the form of rejected books/the slush pile. It astounds me how often self-pub naysayers try to use data that applies to ALL forms of publishing to explain why self-pub is a crapshoot/not worth it/etc. Pot, meet kettle! Publishing is hard no matter what!

And yes, echoing the above: not everyone's choice is self-pub or trad pub. Sometimes it's self-pub or no pub.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Buckell's article is not so good. But the article he links to is fantastic, amazing, and wonderful. Everyone should read it.

The problem with Survivorship Bias is not being able to see the failures. With some digging you can see plenty of indie failures and compare their methods to successes. But first you will need to define *your* standards of success and failure.

With traditional, you can't make the comparison because failures don't get published. Failures that do with low sales are affected by numerous unseen forces in bookstores and publishing offices.

Really pay attention to the section on luck in the linked article.


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## S. Shine (Jan 14, 2013)

jnfr said:


> Then, after reading through this thread, I wanted to add that I'm one of those who sells almost nothing. I have very little material for sale at this time. I occasionally mention this in sales threads just for balance, but don't bother mostly since it's obvious.
> 
> And I still don't consider myself a failure. Because for the first time in over a decade (closing on two decades) I'm writing fiction again, and that's a goal I've wanted to accomplish for a very long time. I am slow and clumsy because fiction is still really hard for me, but every week I sit down and write some more, and for me that's a success.
> 
> ...


I love it that you said that as it reflects my own sentiment. 

If it weren't for indie, I doubt I would have returned to doing something that I loved as a kid. People might say that you can still write without being published, but to me writing and being read by strangers go hand in hand. To just write with the knowledge that what you wrote will eventually just disappear in a drawer is most discouraging to me. It is like saying to a chef that it is about the preparing of a tasty meal, not that others enjoy it. That, to me, is BS if ever there was any. Writing and being read are two sides of the same coin and the option that indie is these days made me return to writing after many years of silence. That alone has added quality to my life. Anything on top of that is the icing on the cake.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

> Does that mean both DaVinci Code and 50 Shades were good or great books? I think DVC was very good, but I know many here disagree. Didn't read 50, but i know many here look down on it. Both books were huge successes.


I know what the scuttlebutt is, but I thought DVC was good. I had a bit of a problem with a professor who had the physical stamina to fight for his life multiple times in one day, but I was loved the puzzle solving element enough to overlook that problem. I never read 50, so I can't comment. It must have had something.


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## bellaandre (Dec 10, 2010)

valeriec80 said:


> Never give up. Never surrender. Always believe that you are the special s***flake that can do what most everyone else can't. _That_ is how you succeed. Just keep at it until they can't ignore you.


I flipping LOVE this!

 Bella


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

_Q: "Is there survivorship bias on KBoards?"_
A: No, unless you consider the members our hosts have banned.

_Q: "Is there self-selection bias on KBoards?"_
A: Yes, unless Betsy travels the country knocking on random doors for posts.

_A good example of self-selection bias:_
A survey conducted during a free creative writing course reveals 100% of people love writing.

_A good example of survivorship bias:_
A census of all traditionally published authors reveals 85% of authors believe editorial curation is critical for a healthy literary culture.

_A good example of survivorship bias enhanced by self-selection bias:_
An Authors Guild press release.

B.


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## Bob Mayer (Feb 20, 2011)

There are many roads to Oz.

And Oz means different things to each person.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Very interesting stuff to read today. I don't know enough to say if there's survivor bias here. I do know that the people who tend to post on KB are more dedicated to learning about self-publishing, whether they can be considered "successes" or not. I think that gives them the edge.

It's totally different on another board I frequent. There it's more the unsuccessful who post, the folks who haven't bothered to learn the craft of writing, much less anything about how to publish their work and have any chance of selling.

I consider myself successful for having sold stories to people from several places in this big, wide world. The future is bright and full of possibilities, and I'm grateful for every post here. I wouldn't have done any of it, if not for people sharing all aspects of their experiences.

I know I could be doing better, sales-wise. I need to have better covers, better stories, and the gods know I need to get more work out. This past year and a half has been crappy, and I basically shut down. Now I have to pull myself together and make up for months of work that didn't get done, which I know cost me sales.

On the bright side, I just checked Smashwords for the first time in a couple of months, and saw that I sold a book (short story, really) in Peru. _Peru._ How else could I have done that, if not for self-publishing?


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## lynnfromthesouth (Jun 21, 2012)

Sheila_Guthrie said:


> It's totally different on another board I frequent. There it's more the unsuccessful who post, the folks who haven't bothered to learn the craft of writing, much less anything about how to publish their work and have any chance of selling.


It's similar in some of the other groups where I have participated. In those, it's more about convincing everybody to review them, or help them sell and market, not on the craft. And there isn't really many people studying writing or what works as far as cover design or blurbs. They also don't respond well to criticism. They're desperate to sell, but not real eager to listen. There's a lot of ad spamming, and lots of exchanges for tweeting and reviews. I've left a lot of groups because they were so spammy.


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## Ardin (Nov 1, 2012)

what are those groups? I'd love to check them out and make sure I'm not making the same mistakes.


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## lynnfromthesouth (Jun 21, 2012)

I think those are easier to find than not.  There's a bunch on Goodreads. I'm in one on Facebook, but a few of us split off and started our own group that's a lot more supportive. I think it's one of those things that's easy to see after joining and watching for a week or two. 

I think serious, and active, discussion about writing craft is a good key indicator. Most of these groups might have a discussion or two, but there aren't many people participating. You see the same few people in the craft discussions, and often there's people that respond to every craft discussion with "That takes too much time, so I just marketed (their method) on Twitter and that wasn't important anymore".


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

I think any article about any subject that gets people thinking about and acknowledging confirmation bias is a good thing, content not withstanding.

The one recurrent theme that I see in the responses to the article that puzzles me is the idea that traditionally-published writers ignoring slush pile writers in their analyses somehow make those analyses suspect. It's much easier for them to compare published authors against other published authors. If one of you could figure out a quick way to sort out a bright line distinction between traditionally-published authors and slush pile rejects that is as clear as the one between indie sellers and indie non-sellers, then there's probably a faculty seat at a research university with your name on it. 

I don't think TP authors are excluding this info to be intellectually dishonest. It's just too hard to get at. After all, 99% of TP authors were slush pile rejects at the beginning of their careers to the point where even Konrath used to say that a published author is one who never gave up. But there's no good way to collect and sort this information or even make an informed guess because only major successes have a platform where they can self-report and have people care. So everyone knows exactly how many times Stephen King and J.K. Rowling  were rejected, but Johnny Q. Midlist? Unfortunately, that's just between Johnny and his mailman.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> The one recurrent theme that I see in the responses to the article that puzzles me is the idea that traditionally-published writers ignoring slush pile writers in their analyses somehow make those analyses suspect. It's much easier for them to compare published authors against other published authors. If one of you could figure out a quick way to sort out a bright line distinction between traditionally-published authors and slush pile rejects that is as clear as the one between indie sellers and indie non-sellers, then there's probably a faculty seat at a research university with your name on it.


I'll take a quick stab at this! 

I think that the main thing most of us are saying is that you can't compare traditionally published, "career" authors to ALL self-published authors - meaning (for example) those who just publish one book and forget about it. It's important to compare "career" authors to other "career" authors, if that makes sense. Apples to apples, not apples to oranges. From there, numbers like author income & sales would have more value. The comparison would be fairer, I think.

To do that, we would need data from vendors like Amazon, which we don't have, as well as a way to define "career" author for the purposes of collecting that data. So this will probably not happen for a long time, if ever. But I think that's generally the idea -- that there's little credence in 'studies' that take ALL self-published books or authors and compare them to ALL trad-pubbed books or authors.

Just my $.02!


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## zandermarks (May 20, 2013)

I'm drawn to the KBoards precisely _because_ of the "survivorship bias." I'm a first-time, self-published author who has written something I'm proud of and something that has been well received by the (admittedly small) group of readers and critics who have read it.

My own sales numbers are microscopic, but reading posts by authors with higher sales neither discourages me nor causes me to project my future sales based on their experiences. Our mileage will necessarily vary.

However, there are some real benefits to be had by hanging out with the (atypically) successful self-published crowd.

1) It helps to understand that it _can_ be done. While success is never assured to anyone, I believe it is true that determination and persistence tip the scales in the direction of success. So the motivational value that comes from the "survivorship bias" is itself of real value.

2) It helps to maintain the long view. Even the most successful authors here did not come out of the gate fully-formed successes. The process takes time, and the perspectives I see here reflect that fact and reinforce it for me.

3) Even when the specific techniques and advice given may not always apply equally to authors at all levels (different situations sometimes call for different methods), the underlying patterns of thinking are themselves useful. For example, an author with a massive Facebook following may get different results than I will with my own lightly-trafficked Facebook page, but the underlying logic behind the decisions they make might be something I can repurpose to my own situation.

(Apropos to this: One of the key underlying patterns of thinking that comes through loud and clear here is that there's no room for inertia and self pity. There's no assumption that a writer is "owed" an audience or "owed" sales. That's a healthy thing for someone like me who is just starting out.)

So, yeah. Definite "survivorship bias." But as an aspiring survivor, I'm totally cool with that. Atypical results? No doubt. But I'm shooting for atypical myself, and knowing that it's atypical is no barrier to pursuing it anyway.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Lynn, that definitely sounds like one board in particular. Lots of lazy, in-curious folks who don't want to take the time to do the work. But, I guess the Darwin principle applies.

Ardin, let's just say it's the official publishing board for a certain beloved device that starts with a letter after j, and before l.  (I won't say more, because forums rules say what is on another board/site stays there.)


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

Lily_T said:


> The one recurrent theme that I see in the responses to the article that puzzles me is the idea that traditionally-published writers ignoring slush pile writers in their analyses somehow make those analyses suspect.
> 
> I don't think TP authors are excluding this info to be intellectually dishonest.


It doesnt matter if they are being intellectually dishonest or not, what matters is do the comparisons have value and are they accurate. Do these charts that Buckell put together have any value for the new writer? If you're an established writer, you dont need Buckell or Wendig to tell you what to do, you're already doing something that works for you. But if youre trying to find your path, are they offering you an accurate picture of your odds of success?


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

Repeatedly--and make of this what you will--I find the books that really take off are the ones that fill a specific need or desire of a specific reader base. I hate to say this, but while quality certainly helps, identifying and getting books in front of the people most likely to enjoy them and share the word about them seems to be much more important.

One can't assume that a trade publisher or an agent will automatically know how to do that, as many of them don't, as indicated by the experiences of folks like JRTomlin. Are such entities positioned to have a better chance? Maybe, but with so much of our reader base interacting and available online, one can do much of this positioning themselves and--as it's always been said--no one cares quite as much about your work as you do.

Finally, the willful disregard of so many in the traditional publishing world for this paradigm shift has very real business consequences for an author interested in finding the best way to market their product. It's one thing to simply miss a sea change and then catch the wave later. It's another entirely to actively protest against the change, to applaud mocking, fake twitter accounts or take out full-page adds deriding the state of the industry.

Both approaches are fine, _but_ the validity of both approaches needs to be respected.

The positioning of product problem reminds me of a thread on another board, where the participants were defending the many houses that missed the ball and rejected _Harry Potter_ before it finally got its moment in the sun. Statements were made that the book wasn't a good one for them to manage, so what those houses did was OK.

No. Bull crap. That series has sold almost half a billion books. If someone missed the boat on that, they were asleep at the wheel. They were Xerox, passing up an interactive GUI, because they didn't know what they had. The guy that knew how to position that product changed the world.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> I don't think TP authors are excluding this info to be intellectually dishonest. It's just too hard to get at. After all, 99% of TP authors were slush pile rejects at the beginning of their careers to the point where even Konrath used to say that a published author is one who never gave up. But there's no good way to collect and sort this information or even make an informed guess because only major successes have a platform where they can self-report and have people care.


That's the reason people are bringing this up here: The information on non-successful indie authors is even MORE difficult to collect. It's just not on the record at all -- where as the slush pile actually does have quite a lot of data on the records. Anybody who has worked the slushpile, and in publishing, has more than anecdotal evidence. Traditional publishing is demonstrably more subject to survivor bias than the claims they are making for indie publishing.

It may not be intentionally dishonest, but it is demonstrably dishonest, because they are literally just making it up. The truth is, the argument that forums like KB have a survivor and self-reporting bias would be stronger if they would acknowledge the survivor/self-reporting bias in traditional publishing -- because it would at least be data.

Camille


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Diana Gabrielle said:


> I'll take a quick stab at this!
> 
> I think that the main thing most of us are saying is that you can't compare traditionally published, "career" authors to ALL self-published authors - meaning (for example) those who just publish one book and forget about it. It's important to compare "career" authors to other "career" authors, if that makes sense. Apples to apples, not apples to oranges. From there, numbers like author income & sales would have more value. The comparison could be fairer, I think.


Why not? There are hundreds of thousands of TP authors who did just that - wrote one book and were never heard from again.*

But more to the point an apples to apples comparison is impossible, so suggesting that you'll never agree to give an ear to a discussion about the two pathways unless both sets are perfectly aligned according to your definition is a little silly. Because even if everyone could agree on a statistically acceptable set, then the outcome of this discussion wouldn't be all that different anyway.

Traditional authors as a group make more money than independent authors.* This isn't shocking. Why? Because more money is spent to ensure their success. Until Amazon decided to spend some money on ensuring the success of independent authors, this was set in stone as the past, the present, and the future of publishing. But they did and things are starting to shift. I suspect most of this back and forth about who does better (which is not really up for argument at this point) has to do with expectations of the future, which neither group can accurately predict, except to discern that it all depends on Amazon. And discussing Amazon on the record in greater detail than "they're a great partner" makes "career authors" in both camps distinctly uncomfortable. 

_The problem with this assumption on both sides of the aisle is that it assumes that each pen name= a different person when we all know that isn't true. It might turn out that just as the slush pile rejects and the TP authors are one and the same, the indie non-sellers and bestsellers are also one and the same._

_[James Patterson and Suzanne Collins alone would probably clear all independent earnings for the last two years. I suppose both groups would try to lay claim to E.L. James and the other hybrids but it would tote up in the traditional column at the end of the day.]_


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> The one recurrent theme that I see in the responses to the article that puzzles me is the idea that traditionally-published writers ignoring slush pile writers in their analyses somehow make those analyses suspect. It's much easier for them to compare published authors against other published authors. If one of you could figure out a quick way to sort out a bright line distinction between traditionally-published authors and slush pile rejects that is as clear as the one between indie sellers and indie non-sellers, then there's probably a faculty seat at a research university with your name on it.


A bright line distinction for trad published and slush pile? One set of books has been printed by a publisher. The other has not.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

daringnovelist said:


> That's the reason people are bringing this up here: The information on non-successful indie authors is even MORE difficult to collect. It's just not on the record at all -- where as the slush pile actually does have quite a lot of data on the records. Anybody who has worked the slushpile, and in publishing, has more than anecdotal evidence. Traditional publishing is demonstrably more subject to survivor bias than the claims they are making for indie publishing.
> 
> It may not be intentionally dishonest, but it is demonstrably dishonest, because they are literally just making it up. The truth is, the argument that forums like KB have a survivor and self-reporting bias would be stronger if they would acknowledge the survivor/self-reporting bias in traditional publishing -- because it would at least be data.
> 
> Camille


I'd argue that it's as simple as writing a script that returns the number of digital titles currently offered on sale that fall below a certain sales ranking. Rinse and repeat at each distributor. Correct for dupes. Tada! I suppose someone better at computers than I am would offer an even more elegant solution.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> A bright line distinction for trad published and slush pile? One set of books has been printed by a publisher. The other has not.


Measures which have been previously rejected by one group as non-inclusive do not make for research faculty seats. Sorry.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Hugh Howey said:


> This is a point I bring up all the time (but it still hasn't caught on). All the people who submitted to the slush pile and never got out of it ARE PART OF THE TRADITIONAL PATH. You have to count them, factor them in, add them to your analysis. That's a bunch of people who sell zero copies and make zero dollars and give up on writing. Putting our long tail on a chart and pretending these people don't exist is asinine.


People would take you much more seriously if you did a prancing pony DANCE.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> Measures which have been previously rejected by one group as non-inclusive do not make for research faculty seats. Sorry. :


Not interested in a faculty. It's a bright line. And it's not a measure. It's a definition of the characteristics of members of two sets.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> Traditional authors as a group make more money than independent authors.* This isn't shocking. Why? Because more money is spent to ensure their success.


That and structural reasons that indies don't have access to brick and mortar bookstores on any real basis. That's, by far, the most significant advantage they have.

Can anyone imagine an indie signing with a trade press with an ebook only contract because their covers and promotion are going to be worth half their royalties? I can't.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Adam Pepper said:


> It doesnt matter if they are being intellectually dishonest or not, what matters is do the comparisons have value and are they accurate. Do these charts that Buckell put together have any value for the new writer? If you're an established writer, you dont need Buckell or Wendig to tell you what to do, you're already doing something that works for you. But if youre trying to find your path, are they offering you an accurate picture of your odds of success?


It, like anything else in life, depends on who you are.

If you have some understanding of consumer psychology* a genre identified, a niche selected, insight into your core demographic*, and enjoy working with people, then you could do worse than sending a submission to a traditional publisher. Bonus points if you wouldn't mind writing variations on a theme or trend-hopping.

If you have none or not enough of those attributes use the freedom of independent publishing to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. No one can stop you. So don't let them.

I'm neutral, obviously.

_*You can usually predict tipping points and consumer fatigue...that guy talking back to his TV who's like "I had that idea two years ago" or "Ugh, this is going to be so overdone."

*This mostly happens because you are either clued in to or are a part of that demographic yourself. _


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Katie Elle said:


> That and structural reasons that indies don't have access to brick and mortar bookstores on any real basis. That's, by far, the most significant advantage they have.
> 
> Can anyone imagine an indie signing with a trade press with an ebook only contract because their covers and promotion are going to be worth half their royalties? I can't.


Those structural reasons _are_ the money spent. Ingram, Baker & Taylor, B&N, independent bookstores etc. (and even Amazon to some extent) grew their businesses on publisher money. They didn't just all pop up from the ether.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "If you have some understanding of consumer psychology* a genre identified, a niche selected, insight into your core demographic*, and enjoy working with people, then you could do worse than sending a submission to a traditional publisher."


That's entering the traditional slush pile.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Not interested in a faculty. It's a bright line. And it's not a measure. It's a definition of the characteristics of members of two sets.


Says you. Now address your statement to all of your fellow independent authors who disagree with you. You might have better luck than the Wendigs and Bucknells of the world.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> Says you. Now address your statement to all of your fellow independent authors who disagree with you. You might have better luck than the Wendigs and Bucknnells of the world.


No. I'm addressing you. You asked for a bright line.

I'm not aware of any independent who disagrees with my definition of the characteristics of members of the sets of traditionally published book and the slush pile.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> No. I'm addressing you. You asked for a bright line.


Did you miss the earlier discussion where most of the posters in this thread rejected that bright line? Within the context of the ongoing discussion my request was for a more acceptable bright line. If you don't have a new one, you're simply restating a previously-rejected definition to some end that I'm not too clear on. 

Edit: I decided to post a response when I usually just lurk because I do notice a survivors bias. At least on WC. A lot of the posters who used to be an active part of the board when I first started reading KB no longer post here. And quite a number of them used to report really exciting sales numbers, in addition to having really insightful posts. Now, I know a few of them are still active and I still see their work when I'm looking for new reads, but a significant percentage no longer appear on the charts and have gone radio silent on their blogs etc. I did get distracted by other stuff in the thread, but I think it was worthwhile to post my anecdote because some of the author-members might be uncomfortable/too new to point that out.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> No. I'm addressing you. You asked for a bright line.
> 
> I'm not aware of any independent who disagrees with my definition of the characteristics of members of the sets of traditionally published book and the slush pile.


Well since you edited your post, I will address your second point. That is probably correct. You are right. I'm not aware of anyone in the world that disagrees with you. But, as always, I'm prepared to be wrong.


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

Lily_T said:


> Edit: I decided to post a response when I usually just lurk because I do notice a survivors bias. At least on WC. A lot of the posters who used to be an active part of the board when I first started reading KB no longer post here. And quite a number of them used to report really exciting sales numbers. Now, I know a few of them are still active and I still see their work when I'm looking for new reads, but a significant percentage no longer appear on the charts and have gone radio silent on their blogs etc...


This observation is not consistent with the definition of survivorship bias. A selection process is a requirement for the existence of such a bias, and unless a member has been banned, no selection event has occurred. This distinction is important, because there is a selection process that occurs when an author proceeds from the slush pile to the traditionally published pile.

B.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

B. Justin Shier said:


> This observation is not consistent with the definition of survivorship bias. A selection process is a requirement for the existence of such a bias, and unless a member has been banned, no selection event has occurred. This distinction is important, because there is a selection process that occurs when an author proceeds from the slush pile to the traditionally published pile.
> 
> B.





> Survivorship bias (or survivor bias) is a statistical artifact in applications outside finance, where studies on the remaining population are fallaciously compared with the historic average despite the survivors having unusual properties. Mostly, the unusual property in question is a track record of success (like the successful funds).[citation needed]


You'll note the citation needed tag there. This is my understanding of it, but according to Wikipedia I am unsupported.  My implied selection process isn't actually happening on the WC, it's happening on Amazon (continued success) which then skews the average when people drop out on the WC. Does this have anything to do with indies as a whole? Maybe, maybe not, but the OP asked about survivors' bias on KB.


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

Lily_T said:


> My implied selection process isn't actually happening on the WC, it's happening on Amazon (continued success) which then skews the average when people drop out on the WC.


If Amazon charged a fee to publish, perhaps this argument could be made. But Amazon does not prevent poorly selling authors from continuing to publish more titles, and any American with access to an internet connection can publish a novel on Amazon. The author must make the choice to self-terminate their career. Amazon is indifferent. Additionally, KBoards does not use sales metrics to determine who may post. Any reader or author is welcome, and members make a daily choice of whether or not they wish to contribute (unless they get banned).

In both cases, self-selection biases may develop. This is a constancy of any and all voluntary gatherings or groupings. Only via the traditional publishing path do we see selection event occurring, and even those authors that are rejected by the gate keepers may still freely post here on Kboards. 

B.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Except the selection process I'm referring to is not publication. I set it off in brackets before and now I'll set it off in its own sentence.

My selection process is continual success.

It is consumer-facing. From what I understand the selection process, as it were, does not need to be administered by a designated entity, though it often is in academic circles. But maybe I'm Doing It Wrong. Amazon itself, for example is often held up as an example of survivors' bias. E-commerce might look like a great idea now, but if you look at it from the perspective of all the entrants to the field when the possibility opened in the late 90s, (let's call them the Web 1.0 class) it looks like a very, very, bad idea. Like the worst idea anyone could possibly have, short of buying houses to flip in 08. ETA: Entrepreneurial circles are where I first became aware of the term and there is no process one has to go through to become an entrepreneur. Much like indie publishing, you just do it. You mostly fail, a few others don't. Voila, survivors' bias. Traditional publishing has survivors' bias too. It just occurs post-publication.

Anyway this is kind of insidery and I probably look like enough of a jerk in this thread already for inadvertently arguing against a tautology, so I'm gonna let it lie. Point is, a bunch of folks jetted. Some of them have addressed the reasons why:http://zoewintersbooks.com/2013/01/26/the-indie-guide, some of them have melted off the internets, and some of them are Modwitch.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Lily_T said:


> Did you miss the earlier discussion where most of the posters in this thread rejected that bright line? Within the context of the ongoing discussion my request was for a more acceptable bright line. If you don't have a new one, you're simply restating a previously-rejected definition to some end that I'm not too clear on.
> 
> Edit: I decided to post a response when I usually just lurk because I do notice a survivors bias. At least on WC. A lot of the posters who used to be an active part of the board when I first started reading KB no longer post here. And quite a number of them used to report really exciting sales numbers, in addition to having really insightful posts. Now, I know a few of them are still active and I still see their work when I'm looking for new reads, but *a significant percentage no longer appear on the charts and have gone radio silent* on their blogs etc. I did get distracted by other stuff in the thread, but I think it was worthwhile to post my anecdote because some of the author-members might be uncomfortable/too new to point that out.


That is simply happens with writers, both traditional and indie. They write a book or a couple and stop, some after being very successful. Sometimes it is because of family or health reasons, sometimes they run out of stories to tell, or some get tired of the struggle. You can't assume it is because they failed in some way. You are bringing assumptions rather than data to the discussion.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "Did you miss the earlier discussion where most of the posters in this thread rejected that bright line? Within the context of the ongoing discussion my request was for a more acceptable bright line. If you don't have a new one, you're simply restating a previously-rejected definition to some end that I'm not too clear on."


I don't care who rejected what. I'm addressing you. You issued a challenge to provide a bright line. I gave it.



> "Well since you edited your post, I will address your second point. That is probably correct. You are right. I'm not aware of anyone in the world that disagrees with you. But, as always, I'm prepared to be wrong. "


I agree nobody disagrees. Hence there is no reason to address my comments to my fellow independent authors who disagree with me. There aren't any.


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## Lily_T (Sep 25, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> I don't care who rejected what. I'm addressing you. You issued a challenge to provide a bright line. I gave it.


Did I pee in your cornflakes or something? 
Because I don't get why you would ignore the context of the rest of the discussion to come after me on a point that I never argued against in the first place. But maybe that's what I get for issuing fake challenges. Take this with my apologies:


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> Did I pee in your cornflakes or something?
> Because I don't get why you would ignore the context of the rest of the discussion to come after me on a point that I never argued against in the first place. But maybe that's what I get for issuing fake challenges. Take this with my apologies:


I'm taking you at your word, and replying to what you write. Apology accepted.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Survivorship bias results from a blind spot that we all have; the world is just constructed in that way. Just about every thread in the WC that discusses successful approaches may represent survivor bias. Which is *not * to say that people who share their methods are doing anything wrong-they can't possibly know how many other people have tried the same thing and failed at it. All they can do is report what they did; all we can do is observe and consider.

Confirmation bias, on the other hand, arises from willful blindness: a person cherry-picks evidence that supports his belief and discounts the rest. You see this here in the exception-seeking in so many threads-especially craft threads. Those who believe story trumps all, for example, cite the same two examples of poorly written bestsellers-it's always Dan Brown and E. L. James-and ignore the thousands of well-written bestsellers and tens of thousands of poorly written non-sellers.

Anyway, thanks to the OP for raising it (and Monique for filling out the picture).


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

WHDean said:


> Survivorship bias results from a blind spot that we all have; the world is just constructed in that way. Just about every thread in the WC that discusses successful approaches may represent survivor bias. Which is *not * to say that people who share their methods are doing anything wrong-they can't possibly know how many other people have tried the same thing and failed at it. All they can do is report what they did; all we can do is observe and consider.
> 
> Confirmation bias, on the other hand, arises from willful blindness: a person cherry-picks evidence that supports his belief and discounts the rest. You see this here in the exception-seeking in so many threads-especially craft threads. Those who believe story trumps all, for example, cite the same two examples of poorly written bestsellers-it's always Dan Brown and E. L. James-and ignore the thousands of well-written bestsellers and tens of thousands of poorly written non-sellers.


Thanks for clarifying this, WHDean! I saw that post upthread, and I knew there was a difference but couldn't quite figure out how to articulate it.


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

Lily_T said:


> Why not? There are hundreds of thousands of TP authors who did just that - wrote one book and were never heard from again.*
> 
> But more to the point an apples to apples comparison is impossible, so suggesting that you'll never agree to give an ear to a discussion about the two pathways unless both sets are perfectly aligned according to your definition is a little silly. Because even if everyone could agree on a statistically acceptable set, then the outcome of this discussion wouldn't be all that different anyway.


Hmm. I just think that when we are talking failures and successes, as the Buckell post is doing, then the slush pile rejects fall under the category of trad-pub failures. I think to ignore those authors in favor of looking at traditionally published authors is itself survivorship bias. It's refusing to look at the whole picture. Just as the Top 100 Amazon sellers don't represent all people in the self-pub path, neither do traditionally published authors represent all people in the trad-pub path. In the latter, there are thousands of writers whose work never sees the light of day - and I think that's worth considering.

Personally? I think its silly to try and reduce the whole self-pub/trad-pub dilemma into graphs and numbers. And that might be a little silly to you - we'll have to agree to disagree! The OP was about survivorship bias - paying attention to the successes at the expense of the failures. When making my own decisions as an author, I'm going to be sure to look at the failures on _both_ sides of the coin.


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

Diana Gabrielle said:


> Hmm. I just think that when we are talking failures and successes, as the Buckell post is doing, then the slush pile rejects fall under the category of trad-pub failures. I think to ignore those authors in favor of looking at traditionally published authors is itself survivorship bias. It's refusing to look at the whole picture. Just as the Top 100 Amazon sellers don't represent all people in the self-pub path, neither do traditionally published authors represent all people in the trad-pub path. In the latter, there are thousands of writers whose work never sees the light of day - and I think that's worth considering.


I'm going to say that both I and Hugh Howey said the same thing further up the thread. I have two reasons: 1. It may be the only chance I ever get to say: 'I and Hugh Howey'. And, I've been told that mentioning his name brings good luck.


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## Adam Pepper (May 28, 2011)

ElisaBlaisdell said:


> I'm going to say that both I and Hugh Howey said the same thing further up the thread. I have two reasons: 1. It may be the only chance I ever get to say: 'I and Hugh Howey'. And, I've been told that mentioning his name brings good luck.


Not only that, you said it first!


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## dianasg (Jan 8, 2010)

ElisaBlaisdell said:


> I'm going to say that both I and Hugh Howey said the same thing further up the thread. I have two reasons: 1. It may be the only chance I ever get to say: 'I and Hugh Howey'. And, I've been told that mentioning his name brings good luck.


Proof of why I ALWAYS feel like a parrot/broken record on this board!


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "Those who believe story trumps all, for example, cite the same two examples of poorly written bestsellers-it's always Dan Brown and E. L. James-and ignore the thousands of well-written bestsellers and tens of thousands of poorly written non-sellers."


Some might believe story trumps all. I don't know. I don't make that claim. But I do use DaVinci and 50 to refute the idea that a bestseller has to conform to the writing standards of some authors and critics. DaVinci and 50 are excellent examples because so many authors and critics on these threads have said they do not meet their writing standards. To refute the idea, there is no reason to mention the thousands of well-written bestsellers or the thousands of poorly written non-sellers.

Someone might mention well-written bestsellers if they were refuting the idea that only books that fail to meet the standards of authors and critics can be bestsellers. They might mention the poorly written non-sellers in refuting the idea that all books failing to meet the standards of authors and critics are bestsellers.


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