Re: ebook sales

Liz Burton writes: “In this case the problem is that the tone of the article makes it sound as though the Triskelion/Mardi Gras/Silk's Vault disasters are the norm rather than the exception.”
 
If that’s Liz’s problem, I assume she wants me to write about the “contributions to literature,” the financial successes and other good news about all the e-book erotica publishers in the Internet world. 
 
Liz, you say in your bio that you were a journalist for several years. Where, for God’s sake? Look at the day’s news budget on the evening tv news. Look at your daily newspaper. You think the gatekeepers are covering the “good news?” Unfortunately for the erotica publishers, most of what would be regarded as news coming from the vendors of soft and hardcore porn in e-book format these days is coming from the shenanigans of publishers like Mardi Gras, Triskelion and Silk’s Vault.
 
You wrote: “You know, I hope people aren't relying on Noel as their only source of information on the publishing industry because it's clear he never bothers to check his facts.”
 
I assure you, Liz, that I check my facts carefully. Back in the 1970s, when I was teaching at the University of Wisconsin, I ran one of the pioneering studies of newspaper accuracy. The results appeared in Journalism Quarterly, the refereed publication for college professors who belong to the Association for Education in Journalism. The findings: a typical six-column-inch news story contains 1.2 errors. That breaks down to 0.6 errors of fact and 0.6 subjective errors. An objective error is getting a fact wrong – someone’s name misspelled, address wrong, age wrong, that sort of thing. A subjective error, on the other hand, refers to a newsmaker’s contention that the story was biased – it left out something substantive, or put something in that shouldn’t be there.
 
It’s usually subjective error that critics of the media are talking about when they complain about media bias.
 
For the journalist, a “balanced” story is an unbiased story. The balanced story doesn’t have to give equal space to both sides of a controversy. The story is balanced so long as both sides to the controversy are acknowledged in the story. If the ratio is 6:1 or 9:1 for one side vs. the other, the story is still balanced. If a newsmaker on one side of a controversy refuses to comment – as did the owner of Silk’s Vault in my most recent story on that company - and that is all that is reported for that side, the story is still balanced. The general public might not like that, but that’s the way the system works.
 
I’m flattered that Liz would think anyone is relying solely on me for news about publishing. I very much doubt that anyone is. But regarding her unsubstantiated allegation that “He never bothers to check his facts,” she’s being foolish. Her statement implies she found objective errors in a story I wrote. If she did, she should have named them. Without that backup, her naked allegation borders on libel. So, name ‘em! Send me a letter to the editor at the Southern Review (no more than 100 words), and I’ll publish it along with a correction of the error(s). If you can’t name the error(s), Liz, there’s no excuse. In the future, you might find it prudent to remember that what you spout on the Internet is forever.



Noel Griese, Anvil Publishers, Inc., Atlanta, GA
[email protected]
www.anvilpub.com, www.anvilpub.net, www.energypipelinenews.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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