Fact-checking the E-Revolution
Update: Sullivan recently responded that the errors were part of Konrath’s introduction, and were his mistakes, not hers. Konrath’s post was edited within 24 hours of my post, but looking at it now, it does appear that the mistakes I pointed out are Konrath’s, not Sullivan’s. My apologies to Sullivan for that.
Robin Sullivan had a guest post at J. A. Konrath’s blog recently, wherein she presented a list of successful self-published authors, asking, “Are you ready to be blown away?” She listed a number of authors who sold anywhere from 2500 to 100,000 books in December, 2010, and adds, “MORE WRITERS THAN J.A. KONRATH ARE DOING WELL SELF-PUBLISHING, AND THEY DON’T HAVE PUBLISHING BACKGROUNDS … On this list, only five people had previous print novels. The rest did not.”
If you’re curious, those five people are:
Scott Nicholson, J. A. Konrath, Lee Goldberg, Stephen Leather, Aaron Patterson, Beth Orsoff, Blake Crouch—
Okay, admittedly, I was an English major, but that seems like more than five to me. You could argue for the addition of folks like Selena Kitt, whose first book was published by StarDust Press. That’s an e-publisher, which to me counts as publishing background, even if she didn’t have a print novel.
It’s frustrating. Knowing Sullivan got that part wrong makes it difficult to trust that the rest is accurate. The sales numbers quoted are self-reported by the authors in the Kindleboards, collected by Sullivan and another blogger. One problem — and this isn’t Sullivan’s fault — is that there’s no outside source. There is no Bookscan for e-book sales, so we just have to trust them. And I do trust that some of these numbers are correct, but overall? I’m … skeptical.
Konrath himself presents another list of authors selling more than 1000 e-books a month, “none of who had any traditional publishing background (no deals, no agents).” Authors like Aaron Patterson— Wait, didn’t we hear that name before? He also lists William Meikle, who published with KHB Books. I can’t say for certain, but KHB looks like small press–are we counting that as publishing background? Then there’s Bella Andre. You can check out one of her early books from Simon and Schuster.
This post took about an hour to put together, and I didn’t check every single author on the list. I’m not writing this post to bash e-publishing. I want to learn more about how e-publishing is evolving, and how I might be able to take advantage of it as an author. But I want facts, not cheerleading. Reliable data, not hearsay cribbed from other blogs. How am I supposed to trust these wonderful numbers if the people putting them forth aren’t fact-checking their own claims?
I’m not going to warn people away from e-publishing. It’s growing, and while I’m personally happy with DAW, I do believe electronic self-publishing is becoming more of a viable option for some writers. Neither of the lists above were entirely accurate, but they do include successful e-publishing authors.
Just be careful. And don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
#
Two random notes from perusing the lists:
1. Many of the authors mentioned as selling all of those books in December had released one or more new titles in December. I.e., in some cases this may reflect an initial sales spike, as opposed to long-term sales. (For comparison, I sold well over 1000 copies of Red Hood’s Revenge in the first week it was out.)
2. A number of these authors were selling e-published books about how to succeed with e-publishing. I’m not drawing any conclusions from this, but it was an interesting pattern.
JRVogt
January 17, 2011 @ 11:19 am
Thanks for continuing to keep an eye on this. It’s fascinating to watch this develop, and while I hope writers continue to be able to take advantage of ebooks and such, it’s wise to approach it knowing the reality of the situation and what any level of success might require.
Jim C. Hines
January 17, 2011 @ 11:22 am
Oh, e-books aren’t going away, and I definitely see them being a significant part of publishing for a long time to come. Depending on what happens when my own books start to go out of print, I’d be very interested in releasing my own e-book edition to keep them available. I just prefer to have facts I can trust before making that sort of decision, you know?
mattw
January 17, 2011 @ 12:20 pm
From time to time, I pop over to Lee Goldberg’s blog. He writes the tie-in novels for the TV show Monk. He talks about his ebook publishing every once in a while, and had a series of posts going for a while called ‘How to be a Kindle Millionare’ or something like that.
He writes in the mystery genre, and seems to have a pretty good following. I’ve seen him put a fair number of posts about his e-books on his blog, and it seems like he puts a lot of his backlist on there.
So I’m not surprised he would be on a list like that. He also says there are people out there that are doing better than him in the e-book market, and that it sounds like e-books are more supplimental to the rest of his writing career.
Jim C. Hines
January 17, 2011 @ 12:25 pm
Oh, I’m not at all surprised to hear that Goldberg is doing well with e-books. He’s been in the business for a while, is pretty sharp, and has both a good audience and a good-sized backlist.
But if you’re trying to prove that authors with no publishing background or experience can be successful with e-publishing, well, Goldberg definitely doesn’t fit that category.
Laura Resnick
January 17, 2011 @ 1:51 pm
I agree with you that reliable external or separate-party data would be much more convincing than hearsay cribbed from blogs, and also more convincing that using self-reporting as the only source of data.
I’m interested in learning, too. I posted my first backlist book electronically this weekend, and am still riding that learning curve simply in terms of the self-publishing logistics, never mind what happens in the marketplace. I am also at DAW, as you know, and also very happy there. So my own interest in self-publishing for the foreseeable future is pretty specific: the sort of projects I can’t/couldn’t interest a major house in publishing (ex. my out-of-print backlist, my collected short fiction, a new collection of my columns and essays on writing professionally, etc.). But, although I have zero interest in leaving DAW in order to self-publish my new fiction, I’m nonetheless, as person who works full-time as a writer, obviously interested in learning what’s happening in this new avenue… But I do think a lot of misinformation and questionable information circulates, as well as a lot of information that’s incompletely or which makes erroneous comparisons or inaccurate assumptions.
It’s sort of like when someone says, “This book sold 50,000 copies.”
Well… without a lot of addition infirmation, that doesn’t tell us anything. If, for example, there was a $500,000 advance and national tour, those 50,000 copies represent a a very weak showing in hardcover sales. But we don’t even know that. What if it was a mass market paperback? Then the book was an outright disaster, a total flop.
By contrast, if the author got a $25K advance and modest support, that’s a TERRIFIC hardcover figure, a huge career advancement. And if those are mass market paperback sales, that’s a good showing and will probably still lead to a higher advance next time.
And if the author for a $5K advance, then that book is a huge success.
But in each case, the book sold 50,000 copies. So CONTEXT is a huge factor not only in the perception of that book (huge success, good showing, or flop?), but also in what it’s earning (a huge profit, a decent profit, or a huge loss).
And I find that there’s often no context or insufficient context in what’s publicly reported about e-book earnings. In terms of what’s privately reported to me… it’s the Wild Wild West. I know some people making money hand over fist, and others making some nice fun money, and others not making anything. So what the private information tells me is that, like professional publishing, success and profits are highly variable writer to writer (and, indeed, book to book).
Jim C. Hines
January 17, 2011 @ 2:02 pm
I’ll be very curious to hear how the short fiction collection does, as that’s something I’ve been thinking about myself. I quoted Laura Anne Gilman in my SFWA blog post a little while back, and she hadn’t been all that impressed with the sales of an e-pubbed collection, but that’s just one data point.
Wild wild west indeed. More facts and discussion, and fewer folks riding in with six-shooters blazing, would be nice 🙂
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Laura Resnick
January 17, 2011 @ 3:32 pm
I find myself thinking back to when e-publishing erotica was all the rage. In a very very similar, impressive self-reported figures were flying all over the place.
I had an erotica novel (the only one I ever wrote) I had sold for $5,000 to a print market which had then folded without publishing it and reverted all the rights. And based on everything I was hearing about the rivers-of-gold in erotica e-publishing, that’s $5K advance was PEANUTS compared to what I’d make now that I’d gotten the rights back and then “sold” it on a no-advance basis to the most successful e-publisher operating at the time.
I made $200 in royalties from the book that year. During the subsequent three years before I got the rights back, I made another $100 total, for a grand lifetime total of $300 for that book in electronic format. So I kept thinking, “Thank GOD I sold it to a print market (albeit one that collapsed after paying my advance). Thank GOD I didn’t write a book thinking I’d make money on the e-royalties after all the paved-with-gold stories I kept hearing!”
Now, certainly not all those people were lying. Or even exaggerating. One of my closest friends was writing for that e-market during that time, and made very good money. But mine never made any money.
It soon dawned on me that I probably wasn’t the only writer in this venue not making money, but no one ever heard about us. People pootled around the internet bragging about how lucrateive their erotica was, not how lucrative it was NOT. I never knew anyone but ME who talked about a bad-earnings experience in erotica e-books. But surely there must have been others? POssibly LOTS of others! And they just didn’t talk about it–at least not in public? (Meanwhile, whenever I talked about my comically bad e-book erotica earnings, I just seemed to irritate people, because I was puncturing the myth about the streets of erotica being paved with gold.)
So one of the things that my experience in erotica e-books (this was about 7 years ago, back before the recent self-pubishing boom) taught me was that the data we were seeing about erotica earnings were lopsided and incomplete, because it was based on a skewed sample set, i.e. people who had something to brag about, rather than the whole sample set (which would’ve included people who did not have brag-worthy earnings, as well as people–like a friend of mine–who chose not to acknowledge in public at ALL that she was writing pseudonymic erotica, let alone discuss sales and earnings).
With that experience in mind…. even if we assume (which I don’t necessarily) that all self-reported anecdotes and figures about e-book sales are accurate… there’s no context. These figures are, for example, out of how many people self-publishing e-books or self-pulishing on Kindle? 500? 84,000? DO we know (within, say, a 5% margin of error, which is a pretty generous margin by survey standards) how big the actual sample set is? And, if that’s known, is there any record of what EVERYONE is earning on their titles? And, if so, what is the median sales and income figure? And what is the distribution? Ex. Are 40% of self-publishing e-writers making 1,000 sales or more per month? Or are 0.004% making 1,000 sales or more per month, while 78% sell fewer than 5 books per month? Etc.
Again, without context, I find the anecdotes interesting, but not much more than that.
Anita K.
January 17, 2011 @ 3:33 pm
“2. A number of these authors were selling e-published books about how to succeed with e-publishing. I’m not drawing any conclusions from this, but it was an interesting pattern.”
Ha, that brings to mind my dad’s major beef with the good old get-rich-quick/how-to-succeed type self help books of the 80s and 90s: this guy telling everyone how to get rich and succeed did so *by selling a book about getting rich and succeeding.*
Jim C. Hines
January 17, 2011 @ 4:11 pm
I don’t know how significant the sales of those “How to e-publish and succeed” books are, but I am curious.
From what I’ve seen, a fair number of writers (myself included) go through a phase of writing how-to articles and books and such. Once I sold those first stories, I figured the how-to articles were a way to get my name out there.
Problem being, it got my name out in front of writers, not in front of fantasy readers. Other problem being that I was still enough of a newbie that I probably shouldn’t have been spouting advice yet. (Not trying to say none of these people should be writing how-to books; just mulling over the trends and my own experiences.)
Laura Resnick
January 17, 2011 @ 4:26 pm
Jim, I know this is departing merrily from your original topic, but I can’t resist. After years of appearing at conferences, over the past year or so I’ve come to a very similar conclusion: In most cases, it gets me in front of people who want to be writers, rather than people who read my fiction or who might get interested in reading my fiction as a result of hearing me speak.
In fact, what I find I mostly get out of public speaking is NOT new readers… but rather invitations to do more public speaking (and, in more recent years, invitations to guest-blog on the blogs of aspiring writers, and on blogs aimed at aspiring writers). So I’m prettys keptical that it benefits my writing career (which is in fiction, now in “how to write” books) nearly as much as staying at home writing does. (Or, indeed, going out of town for a weekend to live my personal life, rather than to appear at a writers conference.) This doesn’t mean I won’t appear at conferences anymore, but coming to this conclusion about them has affected the choices I make.
Jim C. Hines
January 17, 2011 @ 4:36 pm
I do see a benefit in getting your name out in front of established authors, though. It’s not necessarily a primary or direct benefit the way it is to meet readers directly, but–well, in my case, I tend to mention authors I know on the blog, either as examples or just as a random shout-out. On the other hand, I get a fair number of the aspiring author guest blog invites too, and the cost/benefit in time and name-awareness doesn’t always make sense. But between the fact that some of those aspiring authors will be tomorrow’s established authors, along with a desire to pay it forward…
Long-winded, I know. Short version: I agree with you, for the most part, but I do see some benefits and will probably keep doing at least some of that sort of thing.
Jim C. Hines
January 17, 2011 @ 4:40 pm
My origial plan had been to take one of these e-publishing posts and slot in print/commercial authors and books. For example, instead of the one e-book author who sold 100,000 copies, I’d use Rowling or Meyer. But the point would be the same — just because I can find a list of authors selling X books doesn’t mean that’s the normal result. But then I got distracted by fact-checking the list and never got any further. I may come back to that, though, depending on whether or not I feel like stirring things up again.
Terrance Foxxe
January 17, 2011 @ 10:13 pm
Fact one: Some us may never see a contract, and it has very little to do with the quality of our work.
Fact two: Something USD is better than nothing USD.
Fact three: Midlist authors who were dropped because their sales figures didn’t reach the moon and back, some of them are joining us as Indie Authors.
Fact four: Readers choose what they want to read.
Fact five: Readers choose what they want to read.
Some people are doing well, some are not. Quality does mean a lot to the average reader. We don’t fit most publishing houses. Our content may be explicit, strange, dynamic. You all can sit and pick nits all day and night, and some of you will, but it means nothing. Not to us. There are no more gatekeepers, it’s reader’s choice, and marketing is still everything. Me? This is year one. I can’t wait to see year five. I see the light above me, and deem it good.
Ann Elise
January 18, 2011 @ 6:47 am
I think you’re misinterpreting the intention of this post. The intention here is not to nitpick, but rather to act as a reminder to check facts rather than taking everything as gospel.
Jim C. Hines
January 18, 2011 @ 8:16 am
I think you’re responding to an argument I didn’t actually make, and I’m not terribly interested in getting into that argument with you.
Sounds like you’ve made your choices. I hope it goes well for you.
zollmaniac
January 18, 2011 @ 1:34 pm
I took a minute today and read through the blog post that you mentioned at the beginning of yours. It only sparked questions for me that I didn’t feel got a very good answer. Was the point of the blog post to prove that more than one person can do well at self-publishing?
If that was the reason behind it, then all I have to say is, “No shit!” Actually, web comic artists have been doing it for years now (and yes, that’s with actual printed books, too) and quite a few are very successful.
Something I would like to see is information regarding how many are doing well compared to how many aren’t. Or maybe data comparing self-published to traditional published authors to see how things truly vary. It’s great to pull out numbers that only show your side of the argument, but that doesn’t give us any real data to compare it to. I can pull random names out of a hat and say look this person is successful so anyone can be! Well, I can do the same thing with the unsuccessful traditionally published, too.
Honestly, I think the real issues comes from people putting the “self-published” tag on things. To me, it automatically places a negative influence on the book and the author. It reminds me of reading fan fiction on public web forums (something I do not do because I can’t stand it). There’s an occasional brilliant work… a few that are good, but could use some fixing… and then everything is terrible. I, personally, would probably never purchase something published by “CreateSpace” and I know that I’m probably missing a few good books.
This proven to me when my wife recently purchased the Trylle Series and asked me to read it. The books were good. Very entertaining, very interesting world. Not the best, but good enough for the $2.99 price tag. But something kept nagging at me as I read them. All the little errors… the missed word here and there… it felt like someone had dropped the ball at the publisher. I finally took a moment and found that she’s “self-published.” Immediately, I thought, “Of course!” Yes, she does pay someone to edit her book and yes, even publishers make mistakes, but its little things like that which pull me out of a book. And there are a LOT of them in those books (at least the first two). My wife didn’t notice anything and I guess that’s because my mother raised me to be her first run-through editor.
And, even with all their mistakes, the Trylle series has shown me that there is entertainment to be found in the self-publishing world. Amanda Hocking is doing great and from the numbers she posted a few weeks ago, I was totally impressed. Not enough to make me want to follow in her foot steps, but enough to help me push aside some of my negative stereotyping and start looking at other self-published writers. Heck I bought her third book in the series that came out recently (well, my wife did, but she’s a much bigger fan than I am. Plus, I was right in the middle of A Game of Thrones, so my reading plate was full).
I guess my point in the end is that Yes, people can make a living by being a self-published author. People can also fail at being a traditionally published author. Neither world is perfect and it will very interesting to see how things take shape as new technology continues to shape literacy.
In the end, as long as people are reading, isn’t that what it’s all about?
Jim C. Hines
January 18, 2011 @ 1:39 pm
I think it was primarily a response to– Okay, let me back up.
J. A. Konrath has been championing e-publishing for a while now, basically saying “Look how many books I’m selling and how much money I’m making! Why would anyone go with a commercial publisher when they could make lots of money like me?”
One response to these claims has been to point out that J. A. Konrath started out as a commercially published author, built an audience, and *then* went into self-publishing. So his results don’t necessarily apply to someone who jumps into e-publishing their own work as an unknown.
I think the response from Sullivan was intended to show that brand new authors without any commercial background or preexisting readership can too succeed, so there! Which is of course true — they can succeed. But when my fact-checking pokes holes in her claims, it weakens her as a credible source of information. (Which was my point — not that e-publishing is bad, but when someone like Sullivan or Konrath is sloppy about the facts, I have much less reason to trust them.)
zollmaniac
January 18, 2011 @ 3:07 pm
You do make a very good point about credibility (and one of your points I noticed he fixed in his post). I guess my concern is that if he’s the advocate for e-publishing, he’s going about it the wrong way.
He’s playing with school-yard rules and not presenting the data from a point that can’t be thrown back in his face with the same tactics. That’s like responding with “Neener Neener! I’m rubber and you’re glue whatever you say bounces off and sticks to you!”
Guess logic and reason are too much to ask for on the internet though. 😉
Jim C. Hines
January 18, 2011 @ 3:11 pm
Out of curiosity, which item did he fix/change?
zollmaniac
January 18, 2011 @ 3:29 pm
The number of people on the list who had previous book offers, but now that I look at it, he’s still off by one. Unless he’s not counting himself.
Jim C. Hines
January 18, 2011 @ 3:32 pm
Ah – that’s Sullivan’s guest post, actually. I wonder if she fixed it or if Konrath did. And it puzzles me that she fixed it to something that’s still demonstrably incorrect…
I believe around these here Internet parts, we call that a Fail.
markdf
January 18, 2011 @ 10:29 pm
What Laura said above made me think of this analogy: midlist authors often explain to non-authors that, no, their advance isn’t enough to retire on. Midlist authors have to do this because the general public typically hears about the big advances and assumes that all authors make them (or maybe, quite rightly, is astonished we would bother writing for such piddling income). Pointing to ebook success stories right now feels a lot like pointing to Stephen King and see “See! You can make money writing books!” Which, well, yeah. I guess. But telling me ten–or even a thousand–people are making money doesn’t really tell me anything useful about ebooks as a viable income or industry, or at least one not as tough as print.
Like you, I’m not anti-ebook, but, like Laura, I am grappling with context.
Michele Lee
January 20, 2011 @ 10:58 pm
I’m late to this post but I have a few things to add in support. 1) KHP recently took over my publisher Skullvines Press. For the record they’re great people (OMG I get monthly royalty statements. In the first of week of the month like clockwork!) And they do mirror larger presses contracts (except for the advance, but I get higher royalties, which I’m happy with). But you’re right, they’re a small press and never claim to be more. They like publishing works that are good, but that larger presses won’t touch, usually because it’s in a subject that’s not in vogue at the moment. They absolutely count as publishing experience, but on the level of Konrath (if that’s what’s being said), no they aren’t the same.
2) I technically have the right to call myself a best selling author because I was on the best seller list of a major genre book store for (I think) 5 months in a row (with 2 different works). But you know what “best seller” translated to? 20 copies in one month.
3) Ebook copies of my novella have out sold print copies (I know price has something to do with it, but then it seems like everything small press is more expensive) at least 2 to 1. I’ve been on Amazon for a year now and won’t pull out of it, but I haven’t been a impressed by it as Konrath has. I would think very hard about going with a publisher who wouldn’t put out an ebook copy of my book, but I’m not converting to an Amazon-only career. I don’t like how they’ve treated other authors and don’t believe putting all my eggs in their basket is a good idea.
4) I wonder how many sales happen because of sale exchanges, you know, “you buy my Kindle ebook, I’ll buy yours”. I don’t see how a parasitic reading culture that thrives off back scratching sales really grows a person. Or how spending a disproportionate ratio on ads, promo or that kind of sale-for-sale is a boon to a bottom line.
5) I really resent the growing mass (mess) voice that’s using readers and reviewers as beta/first readers and encouraging others to do so as well. Expecting readers to pay to be gatekeepers is insulting. Is publishing disconnected from what readers want? Yeah. Is throwing crap on the internet and expecting it to stick the solution, no.
Jim C. Hines
January 21, 2011 @ 8:38 am
Michelle,
Thanks for the info on KHP! I’m glad they’ve been so good to work with.
I think the e-book vs. print sales can vary a lot. I spoke to a friend whose books are out in hardcover with bookstore distribution, and she made a higher percentage of e-book sales than I do, with books out in mass market (and therefore cheaper). E-books are always available, whereas the print books depend a lot on distribution into the bookstores.
Re: #4, I’m not sure. I see some of that, and it’s not something I’m personally comfortable. Trying to sell your book to other writers has never made sense to me. (Yes, writers are also readers, but shouldn’t publicity be aimed at readers *as readers*, if that makes sense?) Sorry, starting to go off on a whole other rant now…
Anyway, thanks for jumping in to the conversation!
Tara Maya
January 24, 2011 @ 2:03 am
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I have a question.
I’m an author who would count as “previoiusly published” according to your criteria. I published three novels, of the type that Laura Resnick mentioned. Two of them earned me $$ in royalties about the equivilant of what I would have recieved as an advance(4-6 K), the third (with a less prestigious publisher and a terrible cover) still probably hasn’t made more than $200. I also had a short story accepted to an obscure anthology.
The problem is that none of this “publishing experience” mattered to agents or publishers. A few agents told me it would be better not to even mention the ebook sales, because they considered a non-royalty paying publisher just one step above a vanity press. The book sales were uninteresting enough to count against me. Nor did those books build me a name with readers, because I used a different pen name than the one I wanted to promote for science fiction and fantasy.
So does someone like me count as an already-published author? Cause if so, it sure didn’t do me any good selling the books I really wanted to sell the traditional way. I had just reached the point of shelving my series The Unfinished Song for good when I decided, wth, I’ll just make my own damn publishing house. I still see self-publishing as harder than the traditional route, because I’m starting lower down on the hill. I definitely don’t recommend it as a get-quick-rich scheme.
The question is still out for me whether that was a good decision. My plan involves writing the best stories I can, and working hard–same as if a big publisher had decided to back me.
Tara Maya
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
Tara Maya
January 24, 2011 @ 2:05 am
Correction: “non-royalty paying publisher” should have been “non-advance paying publisher.” Obviously a publisher that doesn’t pay out royalties is indeed slime.
Jim C. Hines
January 24, 2011 @ 1:39 pm
Tara,
Short answer? It depends. We talked about this a little at the small press panel this weekend, and Jim Frenkl (editor from Tor) seemed to agree that small press sales generally don’t hurt your chances with a big publisher, but they might not help, either. If you can demonstrate significant sales and a following — and more importantly, if you’re writing good books — then it can help. (How many sales = “significant” is a whole other discussion.)
The short story sale is pretty much irrelevant to selling a book to a big publisher.
I can’t say whether you made the right decision or not. I don’t know why the books were rejected, how successful you’ll be at self-publishing, or any of that. But I wish you the best of luck with it!
Robin Sulliavn
March 24, 2011 @ 8:56 pm
Robin Sullivan had a guest post at J. A. Konrath’s blog recently, wherein she presented a list of successful self-published authors, asking, “Are you ready to be blown away?” She listed a number of authors who sold anywhere from 2500 to 100,000 books in December, 2010, and adds, “MORE WRITERS THAN J.A. KONRATH ARE DOING WELL SELF-PUBLISHING, AND THEY DON’T HAVE PUBLISHING BACKGROUNDS … On this list, only five people had previous print novels. The rest did not.”
Please fact check your fact checking…I did not present the list or the “Are you ready to be blown away” is “lead-in” text was Joe Konrath’s.
You later say…”Knowing Sullivan got that part wrong makes it difficult to trust that the rest is accurate.” But I didn’t get that wrong – you did by attributing it to me.
Jim C. Hines
March 24, 2011 @ 9:16 pm
Given that the blog post on Konrath’s site was edited within a day of me posting this, and the fact that you’re following up more than two months after the fact, I couldn’t say exactly what the original post did or didn’t say anymore.
But if it makes you feel better, I’m happy to acknowledge that yes, it appears that the list you and Derek put together is being presented as part of Konrath’s introduction to your post.