When Has Writing a Book Ever Not Been an Elitist Pursuit?
On Tuesday The Guardian engaged in the book world's favorite pastime. No, not ebook-bashing. No, not baseless Amazon fear-mongering. (Let me try this again.) On Tuesday...Continue reading
Category: DeBunking
The “eBooks Are Dead” Nonsense Has Spread to Australia
If there's one constant in the news industry it's that there's no end to bad coverage on any given topic, including ebooks. Sometimes the bad reporting...Continue reading
When the Publisher Drops the Ball, Or, YA Author Pulls Debut Novel Following Criticism of Its Depiction of Slavery
Q: When is an outrage not an outrage? A When the publisher screws up, and hands reviewers a book that wasn't ready. The hot story this...Continue reading
The Authors Guild Claims Author Income is Down
Sorry to keep beating an old drum, but a new survey report on author incomes was released late last week, and it is just as useless...Continue reading
PSA: Good e-Reader Fact-Check
It has come to my attention that there is still some doubt as to whether a certain blog has a reputation for being less than reliable...Continue reading
Report Shows Retired UK Authors Are Earning Less Than the Minimum Wage
When I wrote about a recent survey of Canadian author income last week, I pointed out that this type of report is almost always flawed in...Continue reading
Survey of Canadian Author Incomes Shows Retired Authors Aren’t Earning Much
One of the favorite pastimes of the publishing community is sharing author income survey reports, and wringing hands over the results. The reports are usually bullshit for...Continue reading
Quartz Uses AI-Written Article to Show Problems With AI-Generated Fiction
There's a lot of hype surrounding AI right now, and not much in the way of substance. In many cases a purported AI system is little...Continue reading
Watch as the Legacy Publishing Industry Invents a New Myth (Why Fiction Sales Are Down)
Remember a few weeks back when I mocked Publishers Weekly for using AAP revenue stats to ask the question why fiction sales were down? (It was...Continue reading
A Million Indie Titles Were Published Last Year, and Other Nonsense
There are two frequently repeated misconceptions about the ebook market that continue to be repeated no matter how often they are debunked. The first is that...Continue reading
How to Misuse Stats and Cite Bogus Projections, and Make the Publishing Industry Love You
Another one of those "ebooks didn't kill print" is being passed around again, and this one is far worse than the dreck we have been seeing...Continue reading
Millennial Reading Habits Have Changed the Definition of a Classic , and Other Lazy Writing
Millennial-bashing is popular among the media, and this is a problem not just because it's lazy writing but also because sometimes it distracts from what is...Continue reading
Republican Congressional Candidate Shamed for Allegedly Writing Bigfoot Erotica
The 2018 election cycle has taken a turn for the obnoxious. There's a story going around that the candidate for a Congressional district in central Virginia...Continue reading
Forbes Deleted That Ridiculous Anti-Library Piece
On Saturday Forbes published a poorly-researched, badly-argued piece that failed to convince anyone that Amazon Books stores should replace public libraries. According to Quartz, the piece...Continue reading
Updated: Amazon Books Should Replace Local Libraries, and Other Publisher-Serving “Solutions”
Do you know how companies sometimes like to buy editorials that support their position (I see this a lot in the WSJ), or even go so...Continue reading