E-books and book sales as reported by publishers to authors are way off

[Werehawk]

If you're an author and have books published by one of the big publishers you might want to do a check on if the figures they are sending you on your actual e-book sales are accurate. Kristine Kathryn Rusch recently started taking a hard look at what was being reported in her royalty statements by her publishers and found quite a few anomalies as far as what was being reported and actual sales. When she started checking with other authors she was not the only author to notice that something was way off in what they were being told by their publishers and agents.
It used to be very difficult or impossible for an author to get access to their actual sales figures but that has changed with bookscan sales figures being cheaply and readily accessible and its becoming an issue that is about to explode in the faces of publishers who have been systematically under stating sales to authors in their royalty statements.
See:
http://kriswrites.com/201...usch-royalty-statements/
and the update
http://kriswrites.com/201...yalty-statements-update/
Also worth reading:
http://kriswrites.com/201...ch-trust-me/   Book publishing and authors.
http://kriswrites.com/201...sea-changes/   What is happening with publishing.
Side note to Bob this may have to be moved into politics as it may prove a bit incendiary....
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."

[Berk]

Kind of shady. And another reason I'm glad I'm looking at something like pure Kindle instead of trying to shop manuscripts around.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Sweno]

Maybe it's my CS history poking through, but aren't ISBN numbers unique (or at least more unique than the publisher/title of the book)?

Cause I'm just baffled by a reporting system that practically begs to use a globally unique identifier, and then doesn't take advantage of one when it already exists.

I'm purposefully ignoring all the other problems she has outlined with the system in place, because I can understand how they grew into being, given the complexities of shipping partial dead trees around.

edit: fixed my broken grammar
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[robkelk]

Maybe it's my CS history poking through, but aren't ISBN numbers unique (or at least more unique than the publisher/title of the book)?

They're supposed to be, but some publishers occasionally reuse them by mistake.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[jpub]

There was some reuse before they switched to ISBN13 from ISBN9.