QUOTE:
. . . it's a useful corrective to industry figures that omit any book without an ISBN
No, it isn't. It's an agenda based cop out to supply the figures the trads want published. And to omit what they dont want the general public to know.
The way to get more accurate figures would be for indies to start using their own ISBN, even for ebooks.
No. But it would help if Amazon started assigning ISBN's to eBooks the same way Createspace was doing so when you didn't have one for a print book.
But Amazon are not going to do it, because they don't want any sales figures in public.
A few percent of authors doing it wont change anything.
And if you're going to make that kind of statement about what authors should do, it needs to be accompanied by "I already do."
I won't deny that the traditional industry sources for statistics are pro-trad pub--that's all there was when they started. But that's also probably why they only count books with ISBNs. In the old days, that was all books. They didn't change to accommodate self-publishing, but that may be inertia more than bias.
Similarly, it's true Amazon doesn't like to publish its own sales figures, but I think the reason it doesn't provide ISBNs for ebooks is that ISBNs cost money. True, Amazon buys in enormous bulk, so their prices must be minimal, but I can easily see an accountant saying, "We use ASINs to identify ebooks, just the way we do to identify other products. What do we need an ISBN for?" Keep in mind this is the company that won't hire a few human being to properly police KDP.
We know what people and companies do. We don't always know why for sure. I've found it's better not to assume motives.
