EREC
Thursday, January 17, 2008
My book was a number 1 bestseller on Amazon! (and why it doesn't mean anything real) -- Jules
My book was a number 1 bestseller on Amazon earlier this week. Yes, really, it was. But before you rush to congratulate me, I'm not posting this to fish for compliments. This is a lesson in how an author could honestly tell you that they're an Amazon bestseller, on sales numbers that wouldn't pay enough royalties to buy a cup of tea on British Rail.
As it happens, this particular book
has done reasonably but not outstandingly well by small press standards, and has sold nearly 1300 copies if you look at the combined ebook and print figures. But it's been out for some years, and is now well down the long tail when it comes to copies shifted each month. In fact, it hadn't sold any copies at all on Amazon UK for over a month before this particular sales bonanza. Want to guess how many copies it had to sell to push it to #1 on a bestseller list?
Two.
That's right, two copies sold put my book at #1 on an Amazon bestseller list. On two such lists, in fact, and #4 on another. And that's the key to how this works. Amazon doesn't just have one bestseller list. It has lots of them. It has the books bestseller list, but it also has a bestseller list for each of the many, many categories it puts books into. So the book was #1 on
Any Category > Books > Fiction > Gay > Lesbian > Erotica > Gay
and #1 on
Any Category > Books > Fiction > Gay & Lesbian > Fiction General > Gay
and #4 on
Any Category > Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature
Amazon's ranking is based in part on both how many copies the book has sold recently, and how fast it sold them. So if a book sells two copies within an hour, that can push it well up the rankings on the chart for a sub-category where even the top sellers don't sell that many copies a day. It may even get to #1. It won't stay there for very long, of course (mine stayed there for about ten hours, helped by a third copy selling a couple of hours later), unless it keeps on selling copies. But the author or publisher will be able to say that it was a #1 seller on Amazon.
The other thing feeding into this is that there are multiple Amazons, and some of them have very slow sales compared with the US one. The UK one sells books briskly enough, but nowhere near the volume of Amazon US, so it takes fewer sales to achieve chart-topping status on Amazon UK.
I didn't game this at all. What happened was that I was talking to friends on irc, and one of them said that it was time they read something of mine. I gave the url to the page on my website with the blurb and links to free sample chapters, and someone else said, "I like the look of that, I'm buying it." I checked the book's page on Amazon a little later, and in fact two of them had bought it. I know this because the book happens to be low on stock at the moment, so the page had the thing with "only X copies in stock, more on order". I have a morbid fascination with how Amazon rankings fluctuate with time, so I checked later to see when the sales fed through into the ranking (it usually takes about an hour), and was surprised to find that book's page now reporting that it was on three of the bestseller charts, as detailed above.
Now, this was pure accident -- I didn't encourage anyone to buy the book, and the only deliberate aspect of this was that I knew that someone had just bought a book, so I looked at the chart at the right time to catch a very short-term blip in ranking. Imagine how easy it is for someone to deliberately manipulate the system. In fact, people do. There are groups dedicated to helping to push each others' books to #1 on some Amazon chart for publicity purposes. A lot of the time it's possible for the dedicated to do this on even the "all books" chart. If they time it for a day when overall sales on Amazon are slow, and are well co-ordinated, it may not cost an awful lot in terms of money spent on books.
Remember this the next time you see someone pushing a vanity publishing scheme with the proud boast that they had a #1 bestseller on Amazon. Ask the questions, "Which Amazon chart, and how long was it there for?" Because the answers may reveal the sad truth that "Amazon bestseller" isn't always equivalent to "big sales". If someone can say that the book has consistently stayed in the top 25 books out of hundreds for weeks on end, that's a *lot* more indicative of true interest in the book than a brief dash to #1 from the bottom depths of the chart.
As it happens, this particular book
has done reasonably but not outstandingly well by small press standards, and has sold nearly 1300 copies if you look at the combined ebook and print figures. But it's been out for some years, and is now well down the long tail when it comes to copies shifted each month. In fact, it hadn't sold any copies at all on Amazon UK for over a month before this particular sales bonanza. Want to guess how many copies it had to sell to push it to #1 on a bestseller list?Two.
That's right, two copies sold put my book at #1 on an Amazon bestseller list. On two such lists, in fact, and #4 on another. And that's the key to how this works. Amazon doesn't just have one bestseller list. It has lots of them. It has the books bestseller list, but it also has a bestseller list for each of the many, many categories it puts books into. So the book was #1 on
Any Category > Books > Fiction > Gay > Lesbian > Erotica > Gay
and #1 on
Any Category > Books > Fiction > Gay & Lesbian > Fiction General > Gay
and #4 on
Any Category > Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature
Amazon's ranking is based in part on both how many copies the book has sold recently, and how fast it sold them. So if a book sells two copies within an hour, that can push it well up the rankings on the chart for a sub-category where even the top sellers don't sell that many copies a day. It may even get to #1. It won't stay there for very long, of course (mine stayed there for about ten hours, helped by a third copy selling a couple of hours later), unless it keeps on selling copies. But the author or publisher will be able to say that it was a #1 seller on Amazon.
The other thing feeding into this is that there are multiple Amazons, and some of them have very slow sales compared with the US one. The UK one sells books briskly enough, but nowhere near the volume of Amazon US, so it takes fewer sales to achieve chart-topping status on Amazon UK.
I didn't game this at all. What happened was that I was talking to friends on irc, and one of them said that it was time they read something of mine. I gave the url to the page on my website with the blurb and links to free sample chapters, and someone else said, "I like the look of that, I'm buying it." I checked the book's page on Amazon a little later, and in fact two of them had bought it. I know this because the book happens to be low on stock at the moment, so the page had the thing with "only X copies in stock, more on order". I have a morbid fascination with how Amazon rankings fluctuate with time, so I checked later to see when the sales fed through into the ranking (it usually takes about an hour), and was surprised to find that book's page now reporting that it was on three of the bestseller charts, as detailed above.
Now, this was pure accident -- I didn't encourage anyone to buy the book, and the only deliberate aspect of this was that I knew that someone had just bought a book, so I looked at the chart at the right time to catch a very short-term blip in ranking. Imagine how easy it is for someone to deliberately manipulate the system. In fact, people do. There are groups dedicated to helping to push each others' books to #1 on some Amazon chart for publicity purposes. A lot of the time it's possible for the dedicated to do this on even the "all books" chart. If they time it for a day when overall sales on Amazon are slow, and are well co-ordinated, it may not cost an awful lot in terms of money spent on books.
Remember this the next time you see someone pushing a vanity publishing scheme with the proud boast that they had a #1 bestseller on Amazon. Ask the questions, "Which Amazon chart, and how long was it there for?" Because the answers may reveal the sad truth that "Amazon bestseller" isn't always equivalent to "big sales". If someone can say that the book has consistently stayed in the top 25 books out of hundreds for weeks on end, that's a *lot* more indicative of true interest in the book than a brief dash to #1 from the bottom depths of the chart.
Labels: amazon, Jules Jones, sales, scams, self-publishing
¶ posted at 7:20 AM by Jules Jones 7 Comments
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Updating the Figues... and How Not to Sign a Book
So here are the current ebook average sales figures based on the last 100 books for which I have new or updated figures. Average sales in the first month currently stand at 102 copies, average sales within the first year: 284, average total sales to date: 346. Back before I even began to collect figures my best guess was that first month averages would be: 100 and first year: 300. Even given that this is, no doubt, a highly limited and probably unrepresentative sample I am feeling pretty smug about getting that close. At least the lines are trending upwards, sort of.... If you haven't sent in your figures, or updated them, please do :) (veinglory at gmail.com)
And as for how not to sign a book... this is part of the 'how not to be an author' guide that I could write. One of the reasons I started this site was in the hope that I could collect some information and help a few authors out there avoid my own trial and error (mostly error) approach.
One of the things about writing mostly ebooks is that my first opportunity to sign a book came as something of a surprise. I have been a regular customer at my local Borders for almost two years now. As such I got to know Deb who always seemed to be on deck and ready to help me find whatever obscure book I was looking for. She finally discovered, through a mutual aquaintance that I was a writer (did I mention I am not good at self-promotion?). In the meantime I had been trying to order a copy of the charity anthology Dreams and Desires, in which my story 'Blood and Feathers' appears.
To make a long story short I ended up getting my copy direct from the publisher and let them know to cancel the third attempt at a special order. The world being perverse (as it so often is, I muse, looking out at the spring snow falling past my window) the book did turn up in store--and Deb bought it! Today she presented it to me to sign my story.
My advice to y'all who haven't done this yet: think about it. I dithered wondering what to write, feeling odd about defacing a book, then accidentally put my real middle initial on it before finally managing to sign my pen-surname. Then I needed prompting to date it and spent a while longer dithering and managed to remember to put the month first as per American date formatting. What a mess.
Next time I will be ready with a cute quip and practised cursive flourish. I can only hope that I get famous enough for my first ever authorial signature to be a valuable collector's item ;)
And as for how not to sign a book... this is part of the 'how not to be an author' guide that I could write. One of the reasons I started this site was in the hope that I could collect some information and help a few authors out there avoid my own trial and error (mostly error) approach.
One of the things about writing mostly ebooks is that my first opportunity to sign a book came as something of a surprise. I have been a regular customer at my local Borders for almost two years now. As such I got to know Deb who always seemed to be on deck and ready to help me find whatever obscure book I was looking for. She finally discovered, through a mutual aquaintance that I was a writer (did I mention I am not good at self-promotion?). In the meantime I had been trying to order a copy of the charity anthology Dreams and Desires, in which my story 'Blood and Feathers' appears.
To make a long story short I ended up getting my copy direct from the publisher and let them know to cancel the third attempt at a special order. The world being perverse (as it so often is, I muse, looking out at the spring snow falling past my window) the book did turn up in store--and Deb bought it! Today she presented it to me to sign my story.
My advice to y'all who haven't done this yet: think about it. I dithered wondering what to write, feeling odd about defacing a book, then accidentally put my real middle initial on it before finally managing to sign my pen-surname. Then I needed prompting to date it and spent a while longer dithering and managed to remember to put the month first as per American date formatting. What a mess.
Next time I will be ready with a cute quip and practised cursive flourish. I can only hope that I get famous enough for my first ever authorial signature to be a valuable collector's item ;)
Labels: sales
¶ posted at 2:06 PM by Emily Veinglory 2 Comments
Friday, March 16, 2007
Please Remember to Update Your Sales Figures :)
The little wiggly graph lines tell me that the average sales figures for the erotic romance ebooks reported to me are 97 copies in the first month, 282 copies in the first year and 344 in total. If you want to be part of the estimate all you need to send me is this:
Publisher Name:
Copies Sold in the First Month:
Copies Sold in total to date:
---and if you have it----
Copies Sold in the First Year:
Copies Sold to the End of the Contract:
email veinglory at gmail.com
If you have updates, please let me know. So far only a few figures are posted but in many cases I only need one more report to make up a publisher average (based on 5+ books from 3+ authors).
p.s. what screen width do you people use? I am unsure how large I can make the graph without making some of you scroll right. Anyone still at 600 pixels wide or are we all at 800 and above?
The little wiggly graph lines tell me that the average sales figures for the erotic romance ebooks reported to me are 97 copies in the first month, 282 copies in the first year and 344 in total. If you want to be part of the estimate all you need to send me is this:Publisher Name:
Copies Sold in the First Month:
Copies Sold in total to date:
---and if you have it----
Copies Sold in the First Year:
Copies Sold to the End of the Contract:
email veinglory at gmail.com
If you have updates, please let me know. So far only a few figures are posted but in many cases I only need one more report to make up a publisher average (based on 5+ books from 3+ authors).
p.s. what screen width do you people use? I am unsure how large I can make the graph without making some of you scroll right. Anyone still at 600 pixels wide or are we all at 800 and above?
Labels: sales
¶ posted at 3:19 PM by Emily Veinglory 4 Comments
Saturday, February 17, 2007
The Sales Figure Project
Hi all!
I continue to encourage writers to email me (veingloryATgmail.com) confidentially with sales figures for erotic romance ebooks. I am particularly interested, at this time, in hearing about sales at Mardis Gras and Triskelion.
All I need to get started is first month sales--where available also first year, total to date, and sales to the end of the contract (for each book, by publisher). All figures are strictly anonymous and no names are stored in the database.
So far only a few figures are posted because although I have data for over fifty books I only post the average figures for each publisher when I have a minimum of five books by a minimum of three different authors.
I am also tracking overall average figures which will be calculated over the last 100 books reported. These give some idea of typical sales in this genre regardless of publisher--shown below. If the industry is going well (from the writer's point of view) these should be going onward and upward!
Hi all!I continue to encourage writers to email me (veingloryATgmail.com) confidentially with sales figures for erotic romance ebooks. I am particularly interested, at this time, in hearing about sales at Mardis Gras and Triskelion.
All I need to get started is first month sales--where available also first year, total to date, and sales to the end of the contract (for each book, by publisher). All figures are strictly anonymous and no names are stored in the database.
So far only a few figures are posted because although I have data for over fifty books I only post the average figures for each publisher when I have a minimum of five books by a minimum of three different authors.
I am also tracking overall average figures which will be calculated over the last 100 books reported. These give some idea of typical sales in this genre regardless of publisher--shown below. If the industry is going well (from the writer's point of view) these should be going onward and upward!
Labels: Mardis Gras, sales, Triskelion
¶ posted at 7:35 PM by Emily Veinglory 0 Comments
