Bob Baker's Book Promotion Blog

Amazon's Author Central Adds Sales by Week & Geography Stats


This is good news for authors who are signed up for Amazon.com's Author Central ... (If you're not, visit this page for details.)

Here's part of the official blurb from Amazon:

"We're happy to announce that - for the first time ever - authors can see weekly sales trends of their print books as reported by Nielsen BookScan. On the new Sales Info tab you can view your print book sales geographically, as well as by paperback or hardcover."

There are three new Author Central features that provide helpful data: Sales by Geography, Sales by Week, and Bestsellers Rank History.

After poking around on it for a few minutes, I discovered that one of my bestselling books (Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook) had sold a number of copies in Boston, New York, and the Mobile-Pensacola area.

And by using the Bestsellers Rank History, I learned that over the past year the book hit as high as #9,064 on April 5 and dipped as low as #262,595 on November 11. It's currently ranked #89,722 out of more than 8 million books.

Having access to these statistics could really come in handy. For instance, knowing where your books are popular might help you plan author tours or speaking events. The data could also help you rate the effectiveness of promotional campaigns.

Kudos to Amazon for making this valuable information available to authors and publishers who are signed up for the free Author Central program!

Again, if you have at least one book available for sale on Amazon, consider signing up for Author Central.

-Bob

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Seth Godin & the Problem with Traditional Publishing


On his blog today, Seth Godin announced his new publishing venture, The Domino Project. In the post he highlighted four factors that drive the traditional book publishing business model. Here's an excerpt from the post:


       Trade publishing (as opposed to textbooks or other non-consumer ventures) has always been about getting masses of people to know about, understand and read your books. The business has been driven by several foundational principles:

       1. The middleman (the bookstore) has a great deal of power. There’s only a limited amount of shelf space, and there are more books (far more books) than we have room for. No display, no sale. That's one reason books are published with the economically ridiculous model of 100% returns from bookstores. Huge stores can carry thousands of books and return them if they don't sell. Large chains get a say about what's on the cover, what the title is, and they even get paid for shelf displays.

       2. The audience (the reader) is largely unknown to the publisher, and thus to the author. Authors with large followings still have to start over with each book, because they don’t have permission (or the data) to contact loyal readers directly.

       3. Pricing and product are static and slow. Once a book is published, the price is set forever. Add to that the glacial speed from conception to publication date and you see a system that is set up to benefit neither the publisher nor the reader.

       4. Books are inherently difficult to spread. The ideas in books might travel, but the act of recommending a book, having the idea stick and a new sale get made is slow or broken. Given how important the ideas in books are, this chain has many weak links. It's worth rethinking how a publishing house could organize around its ultimate goal, which is to spread ideas.


If you're a savvy author or indie publisher, these factors won't be news to you. But it merits repeating the message that we live in an incredible time of change. Huge shifts in the way people create and consume books, music, film, games and other forms of entertainment and education will continue to take place.

If you sincerely have an interest in delivering your message to your ideal audience, you must be open to operating in new ways. You must embrace the latest tools, formats and avenues that will help your ideas spread.

Holding out hope that some outdated corporate entity will come along and do all the dirty work for you won't serve you or your readers well.

Embrace the flow!

-Bob

Get more tips and inspiration when you subscribe to my free "Full-Time Author" ezine. I'll even send you a free download of my Self-Publishing Confidential report. Learn more about the free subscription here.


Or just sign up using this quick and easy form:

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Your Primary Email

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