Number Problems
Sarah Weinman posted a link to an interesting article by an agent who discusses a publishing reporting tool called Bookscan. Publishers use Bookscan to tell them approximately how many copies of a book were sold. The problem is that it’s numbers aren’t accurate. According to the article publishers figure in a margin of error, that it reports about 70% of sales, but for one of his clients it was actually about 50%. Which cost his client a sale, since the publisher assumed that their previous book’s sales were quite a bit lower than the royalty statement said they were.
This is a maddening problem in the world of publishing. It is amazingly difficult to find a seemingly simple statistic: how many copies of a certain book were purchased?
You would think that this would be important enough for some sort of accurate system to be set up. Um, no. There are lots of reasons. But it sure doesn’t add to an author’s peace of mind. Especially since royalty statements are only sent out twice a year.
You can’t go a week these days without hearing that the publishing world is changing. Maybe one of the changes will be finding a way to get better numbers. It could only make things better for everyone involved.
On another note, I’m still struggling with word count, but at least I’ve been over 500 the last couple days. I have a tough scene coming up that I haven’t wrapped my head around yet so I’m giving myself a little leeway.