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"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"
There's a good book on this called "Damned Lies and Statistics" that I recommend to people.[1,2]
[1]: https://archive.org/details/damnedliesstatis00best
[2]: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520274709/damned-lies-and-s...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. I think you are drastically over-estimating the share of developers that read software development related books. Out of the 150+ software engineers I worked with on a daily basis throughout my career so far, I can guarantee you not even 5% have ever read programming books (and I work…
Also, the distribution is skewed. Between my wife and my own collection, we have owned at least 120 O'Reilly books.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
BookScan isn't a reliable source of information unfortunately. It only counts when a book's ISBN is physically scanned over a scanner (no ebook, audio book, libraries, specialty sales, etc) and also only covers 75% of retail in general. Generally, you can bet BookScan largely undercounts by a very wide margin.
The majority of books written don't even get published - so the majority of books are definitely read by less than 12 people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of books written don't even get published - so the majority of books are definitely read by less than 12 people.
This way of looking at it might justify the statistic, but at the cost of making it uninteresting.
For publishing, I wonder how many copies of little-bought books are read, and how many are printed -- both probably quite different to the number sold. And I also wonder how the outcome distribution compares to venture capital outcomes, and what predictor variables are useful. "Harry Potter" is a famous case of prediction being difficult (or at least badly done?) but you can probably get some signal from author (writing history, other celebrity), genre.
>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies >>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies >>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies >>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies >>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of books written don't even get published - so the majority of books are definitely read by less than 12 people.
what counts as a book? If a book thats not published is a book, what about a collec5uon of my notes and memoirs on my blog. It got read by loads of people, should it count to the statistics?
>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies >>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies >>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies >>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies >>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies…
What does "book" and "sell" mean here, following the article's excellent explanation on how those terms vary wildly. Are those figures per year or lifetime for the books?
>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies >>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies >>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies >>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies >>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies…
>>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies >>>5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies >>>21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies >>>51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies >>>14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies…
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The whole 2% makes 95% of all revenues doesn't just apply to books... it certainly is true for the video game industry, and I suspect, most of the industries being sold online.
On video game sales, I find it interesting how successful games can be while being 90% the same as an existing established game. I’m not coming at this from some kind of ethics/copyright perspective, I think it’s totally fine to rehash the same idea. I’m just surprised they sell so well when I look and think “why would I buy this, I basically already have it”. The particular example I’m thinking of is a series called…
This applies to the real world a lot too. If you have a lot of competitors in your space, it's a good sign because the market has already been validated. It's obviously best to be the first in a good market but it's hard to predict whether the market is good when you're the only one playing.
In games I think the principle applies even more because gamers often want to play more of the same and once they finish all the Overcooked content another game that fills that need will work. Plate Up has also gotten popularized by many streamers and YouTubers playing it.