Publishing statistics
Stuff has an interesting story on self-publishing and how e-books and Amazon make it easier. I’m in favor of anything that produces more good books, but I would like to give two warning notes, one statistical and from my experience, and one non-statistical and from other people’s experience.
The statistical warning note is that most books on Amazon don’t sell much, if at all. I have a book, a graduate text in a minor area of statistics, for which Amazon gives me sales data. This book sells 2-4 copies a week through all North American bookstores (and so less than that just through Amazon). Even so, it has never been out of the top 10% of Amazon’s sales rank, it usually is at about the 95th percentile, and sometimes makes it into the top 1%. Nearly all books on Amazon sell less than this.
The non-statistical warning note is that the self-publishing industry is historically noted for having a lot of scams. A bit of Google due diligence is useful before you spend money on things.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »