How to track your book ranking on Amazon and B/N

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Permalink Reply by Lynn Serafinn on December 23, 2008 at 6:25pm

Hello there, Typing Monkey. ;-)
Thanks for these great tips. I am just getting ready to publish my first book and have selected a POD company here in the UK that also works with all the US distributors (Ingram, B&T, etc) and I am getting ready to start my Amazon launch campaign. The launch date is 7 April.

I have a couple of questions about these services and tracking in general:

1) Someone told me that it was difficult to track your sales when your ISBN is registered with a POD publisher. Is this your experience? When I heard this, I thought, "No problem. I'll just buy my own ISBNs." But then, I was advised that if I do that, I would have to set up ALL my own accounts with all the distributors, and that they are reluctant to do so unless/until you have a full catalogue to offer them (what to speak of the fact that this would be an enormous investment of time, and my primary profession is as a life coach/personal development trainer). So the question is, are you able to track sales using these services you mention if your ISBN is through a POD company?

2) This question is about how Amazon track sales to list you as a "best seller". I've been told that the "best seller" status is dependent upon what action is occurring during a certain time period. Do you know what time period that is? Is it a day, week, month? In other words, say I have my launch date of 7 April but some people will "pre-order" before the official launch. Are these counted as sales that occur on the DAY of the launch, or are the sales "spread out" in the statistics, meaning that they wouldn't contribute to the launch stats?

If you (or anyone reading this) could share your strategies for this, I would be truly grateful!

Warm wishes and happy holidays,
Lynn

Permalink Reply by Typing Monkey on December 29, 2008 at 5:28pm

Hi Lynn,

Okay, welcome to Hell. The moment you tell anyone that you are an author they want to tell you (A) that POD is not really being published. REBUTTAL: Getting handed a $5-10,000 advance if, and I do mean if you are lucky, and being told that "that is not really your money, you have to invest that, and a lot of your own money promoting your book, because no one else will do it for you," and don't forget that your royalty rate is somewhere between 5 and 8%, then there is the agent's fees, HUGE returns, and other sneaky accounting tricks some agents have told me publishers pull, and suddenly you won't be paid on your books unless and until you sell over 10,000 copies (that don't come back). So to them I say "poo!" and I have been in the black (profits) from day one on POD, had a book in the top 4% of all Amazon book sales, and another one in the top 12% in the same year.


(B) They will say you are getting ripped off, or that yo can make more money doing whatever they say you should do. Again I say "poo!" 35% royalties--paid monthly (not annually or semiannually) "helps pay de rent" around these parts! In fact, I just now got an email telling me the bank wire/direct deposit thing just hit for December (yaay!)

(C) Rankings. If you have an ISBN it is an ISBN, and in fact, Amazon (the company who does the ranking) owns not one, but TWO POD companies in the US, and they just announced in October that they (well, Amazon.co.uk) is doing POD --and i want in!!! I emailed them today saying lemme in! I am an American! (that always works! :-)

Hopefully they will let me pub in the UK, because you guys have all the cool authors. So, as to ranking. I ONLY pub POD and all of my books rank--in fact, that is how I know that I was in the top 4%. You see, someone found my rank, so I guess there exists somewhere the ability to pull a spreadsheet for the year and see ALL of the topseller on Amazon. And since I am in the book (twice! "I'd like to thank the Academy . . .")

So "someone is an ignorant doo doo hed (that is about as polite as I get) and they should stop trying to put (poo) in your head! It is hard enough to get out there and sell books (we are WRITERS, not salesmen! duh!) without people telling you that something you did was wrong. Oh, and yes, the free ISBN you get from your publisher (whoever "publishes you" owns the ISBN, but until you sign your life away with a vanity press or a "major publisher" you own the rights of copy, which is what you really want--and 35% of the take!

okay, let me catch my breath from ranting . . .

okay, so questuionne #2!

Okay a NY Times bestseller is based on a lot of stores ordering a book all at once (which is almost always 6 months in advance, based on HUGE promises from the publisher, and discounts, and the author "allegedly" promising to promote until they fall over and die from exhaustion (on the 6 o'clock news--it makes for good book sales) and when the book comes a lot of "bestsellers" don't really sell that well (shh! don't tell anyone it's all a PR stunt!).

An AMAZON bestseller is really cool: Okay, so we all know Harry Potter et cie., nd now Twighlight etc. is all kinds of #1 on Amazon.

But... "Gone With the Wind is #1 on Amazon Books > Romance > Historical > United States

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/13372/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1...

That still counts as " a #1 Book on Amazon (in said category). As long as you add (in said category) you are still #1. At the moment, that ISBN vrsion of that story is #12,000 something. Another ISBN # (in paperback) is #10,000. YET ANOTHER ISBN # of that same stupid book is #something or other. If there were only one paperback version (instead of like, 50) that book might be in the top 100 of AL books on Amazon.

So Amazon bestsellers are kinda weird. You are allowed to drill down into a category. When you book is selling well enough to be in a category (get your friends to ALL recommend that it be in a category--it's down there on the page around tags I believe), it will be ranked. That (and possibly a few others) is your category-the one you want to hit #1 in, on your way to be # on All of Amazon.

So, I guess you could say that i have had two bestsellers, or to be really anal, one (the one in the top 4% throughout 2007). Amazon ranks about 4 million books before they give up and stop handing out numbers, so there are a lot of books that get no rank at all. Your book will do rrrrrrrrreally well in early sales. Early sales give you a big boost, and later (years later) you kinda have to work a little harder, because Amazon takes "time on Amazon" into account for your rankings. This gives new books a chance to get in the public eye, which is cool. Pre-order rank is rank I believe. HP was ranked #1 in pre-order, so it might hold until opening day. I haven't every really thought of that. So now I am wondering how that works.

Well, that's a lot of words. I hope some of them help. Happy New Year! 2009 is coming, so get ready to promote! If you need help, lemme know, I have a group of authors who support each other (in theory). And wish me luck breaking into Amazon.co.uk! PS Make sure you are listed on Amazon.com, which you prolly will be.