Tracking Sales Data When Self-Publishing

by @AuthorAmberLin

We have another guest talking about tracking sales today, Amber Lin! I asked her for input, since she does so much self-publishing and would have a different perspective. Take it away, Amber. :-)

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Wheeee, thanks for having me! I’m Amber Lin, and I write sexy romance. This is my first time on Word Whores. (Be gentle, please…)

The topic of the week is tracking numbers. I read the previous posts and there are thoughtful posts about whether to track Amazon ranking and what it means in relation to success, along with practical tips. I wanted to throw in some thoughts from the books I self-published.

Because you get a lot of tracking data when self-publishing! Yay! 

Unless you don’t like tracking data, in which case you are free to ignore… In fact, mostly I do ignore it.

I could take a snapshot of my sales of each book at the end of the day and chart them and know sales trends by day of the week or even time of day. There are self-published authors who do that. But I don’t have that kind of fortitude.

Looking at sales and thinking about sales bleeds into my writing. Then when I think how a scene should go or how a character should act, I’m thinking of how it might impact my bottom line—instead of thinking about how I want the story to go. How it needs to go.

So, each month I just accept direct deposits into my account, and either clap or groan at the amount. Or shrug. This is similar to how I react to checks from my publishers, really.

But every few months I take all that data I’ve been ignoring and build a sandcastle.

First I create a nice level place to work. This used to be an Excel spreadsheet with months and books. Now I use TrackerBox, a desktop software.

Then I add wet sand. The report from Amazon KDP. From Nook Press. From Smashwords. From All Romance. From Kobo. ALL THAT SAND. And I pack it together really tight and form little spires on top. That’s important, the spires.

And when my castle is done I have fancy graphs telling me all kinds of things. Like yeah, it may seem like that one book did the best, and maybe the reviews tell me that, but they’re wrong. Actually this other book sold way better. If I’m wavering between which book to write next, this can help. If I want to decide which book to promote through various means, this can help. 

And trends! What even are trends…

Okay, the sandcastle doesn’t tell me that.

But I can look at the shape of it and feel more confident I know what’s going on. What does a 2,000 sales rank mean to my career? What does $350 on a royalty statement mean? It means very little, as single data points tend to mean very little, as small as a grain of sand.

I need to dust off my hands, stand up, and look at the whole if I want to really understand how I’m doing.

Can any authors with self-published books weigh in on how you handle it? (And again, thanks for having me! You can find out more about me and my books here.)

Amazon Ranking: An Expose!!!

by @CarolynCrane

Our Saturday Word Whore Veronica Scott is under the weather - hope you feel better soon, V! - so Word Whore alum Carolyn Crane is pitching in to share her insightful, meticulous and professionally mature system for tracking sales.

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Hi!! It’s former Word Whore Carolyn here, filling in. The subject this week is one near and dear to my heart. I’m not obsessed! Here, a reprise of an old post from my first book, then updated November 5, 2o12.

It's so rewarding when you look at the way you were, say, two years ago, and see how far you have come!! 

Mind Games, the first in my Disillusionists trilogy, came out in 2010.  OMG, I was obsessed with my Amazon rankings!  You can tell from this old post, below.

The Oddshots blog, where this originally appeared, is sadly now gone. So I'm reprising it here.

The sad state of Carolyn Crane in 2010...

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The Amazon sales ranking: An expose!

Before my book came out, I noticed that many other authors talk about the Amazon ranking, and how on release weeks, they would check it a lot to see where their book was. I was sure I would be different because:

1. I don’t tend to buy books from Amazon, and naturally, I assume most people behave as I do.

2. I’ve always heard those ranking don’t mean all that much. 

3. I’m interested in whether people actually enjoy the book—not sales, or a silly number.

So! Mind Games was released last week, and what did debut author Carolyn Crane do? Check the Amazon rankings!

I started off not doing it much, but since other authors talk about it, I figured if they check it, there must be something to it. Because Carolyn Crane is all about the peer pressure. So I started checking it more and more. Also, maybe nobody knows what it means, but the little number kept changing! Something was happening. Somebody needed to monitor it.

What is the number all about? I did some high level research.

I typed “how do Amazon rankings work” into Google and quickly discovered that the rumors are true: nobody outside Amazon really understands it. (Though some say it becomes more meaningful when you get around 1000, or into the best-seller territory of 100 or lower.) But nobody really knows what it’s based on. Sales are part of it, but there are other factors. What are these other factors you ask?

Nobody knows. Many people work hard to try to figure these other factors out. They write articles with phrases like: “the sales ranking has to be dissected dynamically” and “figures are applied to the algorithm during the calculation.”

Essentially, these people are reverse engineering the rankings, just the way scientists tried to reverse engineer Arnold Schwarzenegger in the time between Terminators #1 & #2. And we know how that ended.

But, back to me. The thing is, these little numbers would change, and it became weirdly entrancing. Once, my number hit the 3,000s! I felt happy! Like the book was doing well! Other times, my number would backslide and I would be a sad bear.

In their FAQs, Amazon is suspiciously vague

Amazon says “the lower the number, the higher the sales” and that the rank “reflects recent and historical sales.” Which, if you sort of think about it, are somewhat contradictory. And why not just put a number that grows every time somebody buys a book? Like a fun little meter that says, hey! Another book was bought! No. Instead, they rank your book against ALL other books on the planet in the most mysterious way possible. As if authors aren’t insecure enough. 

 

Clearly something is going on. It has all the hallmarks of an experiment— something akin to the Dharma Initiative on the TV show LOST! What is the purpose of Amazon’s Dharma Initiative-type ranking? How does it work? I have theories.

Theory #1: It is a sinister ego-crushing experiment

In this scenario, the number is based only vaguely on sales, but mostly on how many times an author checks the number.

As you may or may not know, one of the classic techniques of breaking down a person’s self esteem is to praise them lavishly (You’re 3,200!) and then withdraw that praise (248,560. Loser!) And then, when the author goes crawling back: (Hey! You’re okay! 11,350!). And the more you check it, the more it messes with your head.

Theory #2: The ranking is simply a carrot and stick trick to drive author traffic

Maybe Amazon is simply interested in driving traffic. I mean, isn’t that what big websites ultimately want? Think about it: authors are huge purchasers of books; maybe the ranking number is calibrated to get authors to visit more. In this theory, Amazon creates a believable range upon your release, that is, they “seed” your book the way a sports team might be seeded, and then Amazon’s artificially intelligent system goes to work, learning what sort of fluctuation brings you back, and what sort of fluctuation disheartens you so much, you stop checking for a day, and it modulates until it has you checking at an optimal frequency.

Theory #3: A funny joke for Amazon insiders

What if the number is way more random than anybody imagines? What if, inside Amazon’s headquarters, there is this giant monkey cage, and computer keyboards are positioned around the cage. And the monkeys are like, eeee eee ee! punching the keyboards, and everybody who walks by laughs, because they know that people write articles about the number, and authors check it incessantly, and it’s just monkeys playing! And it’s this thing that boosts employee morale. A joke they are all in on that creates togetherness.

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UPDATE, November 5, 2012:

Oh, how sad to look back at those days when I was so hung up on a number to the  point of weaving paranoid theories about Amazon.  

This kind of behavior appalls me now. It not what being a  true writer, a true artist, is all about! I'm glad I'm over it. 

For example, my cross-genre PNR/spy/suspense romance, MR. REAL, just released this last week, and do I have it as an item on the toolbar? Actually, I don't have it on my toolbar! 

I'll admit to checking  the Mr. Real Amazon page now and then, but it's simple curiosity. A few years has put everything in perspective.

My other pen name, Annika Martin, writer of torrid bank robber erotica, recently got on a bestseller list as part of this 99-cent erotica bestsellers sale. 

Did I freak out? No. A rank is just a number. It means nothing! Artistic quality is what should count.  

Not to boast, but I think these past two years have allowed me to grow as a person, and truly put things in perspective. 

Hey! Thanks for visiting. If this post helps even one other writer see what a waste of time these obsessions with Amazon rank are, or gives them hope they they can change and get over their fixation on a number, I will rest easy tonight. Have a great week, people.

That Way Lies Madness

Tracking sales? Noooooo. No! Step AWAY from the stats. You have a job and tracking numbers isn't the one that pays the bills.

Okay. If you're looking for full disclosure from me, neither does my writing - it's more a self-supporting hobby to date. But unless I obtain a job in sales and marketing (which will only happen if the pod people get me - as neither sales nor marketing are among my core competencies) writing is my sole avenue for potentially paying the bills. Some day.

Is there call to track numbers, ever? Absolutely.

1. You're self-pubbing

In fact, if you self-publish, as you tinker with price points, sales (free to download, $.99 sales, etc) and/or different genres, keeping track of units sold is not only possible, it's necessary. It is your only metric for knowing how and what part of your business is performing. You know. You *thought* the sexy romps would sell like hot cakes. Heh. You pull up your sales reports from the different online vendors and discover that your true crime series is out performing sexy romps by a 2 to 1 margin and at a higher price point. (Totally hypothetical situation, btw, so don't set out to write true crime unless it sings torch songs to your soul . . . and you can't find a medication to address that.)

If you are pubbed by one of the big publishing houses, you aren't going to be able to accurately track sales numbers until royalty statements begin arriving. But when you're published by one of the big houses, sales benchmarks have a tendency to matter more than units sold. Did book x earn out? Did books 1 and 2 sell enough copies to justify a book 3? Then, when you're no longer concerned with those benchmarks (because the answers were all YES) the benchmarks involve hitting lists.

At the end of the day, though, the reason I don't stress book sale numbers is because once a book is released, nothing I do (beyond being a reasonably decent human being - social media, speaking, going to signings - you know - the normal stuff authors do) will make someone buy a book.  Driving yourself crazy, fretting over something you ultimately can't effect unless you're herding people into the book store at gunpoint to buy - it just seems self-defeating. Write. Edit. Copy edit. Publish. Promote within reason and then RELEASE. Take a breath. Start the process over again.

Maybe it comes down to a question. What do you love? The writing? Or comparing your Amazon ranking against your nemesis's and feeling small because you either don't rank as high, or you do and your short-lived sense of triumph is punctured by the misery of wondering whether you'll be able to stay on top? If it's not the writing, there *are* easier ways to get your nemesis's goat. Not that I have deep, personal experience.

Chasing the Numbers

So, I'm not at the point, obviously, where I'm tracking book sales.  Occasionally I'll go and look at my Amazon rank for Thorn presales and wonder what that might actually mean.  I honestly don't know.

But here's what I do know: once I can track sales numbers, I will probably be a bit obsessive about it. 

Because lord knows, I already google "Marshall Ryan Maresca" and "Thorn of Dentonhill" to a surprising degree.  Especially now, since new things are popping up on a regular basis.  That's how I discovered an article pointing to me as an example of marketing one's work using Google Plus.  (What?  Really?)  That's how I found out that Thorn has a Goodreads page now.   Which gives me another thing to check obsessively, as I can keep track of the complete strangers who have added it to their "to-read" list.  For some reason that's incredibly exciting to me.

What I'm saying is, if I have something I can track, I'm probably going to keep my eye on it.  If it's something I can quantify, perhaps even put in a spreadsheet.... oh, I'm going to be all over that.

Maybe at some point, I'll be more zen about all the how'm-I-doing data out there.  But right now, I'm making the most of it.

Speaking of things you can learn by Googling me, I'll be at FenCon in Dallas September 25-27!  Come say hello!

Saturday  12:00:00 PM  - 1:00 PM   Getting the Geos Right   Description: Geology and geography and how they should shape your fictional society. Panelists: R. Acks , L. Carl , Mi. Finn , M. Maresca , M. White , K. Murphy *

Saturday  6:00:00 PM  - 7:00 PM   Handwavium And Technobabble   Description: Where do writers come up with all those terms, anyway? Do they have roots in the real world, or does someone just throw a D20 and see what they come up with? Panelists: P. Black , S. Cupp , J. Mandala , M. Maresca , L. Antonelli *

Sunday  10:30:00 AM  - 11:00 AM   Reading

Sunday  1:00:00 PM  - 2:00 PM   When Will it Ever End?   Description: How long is too long? When should a series hang it up, or is there no limit to the number of books an author can or should write in a specific setting? Which well-known series have done an excellent job of holding our attention across multiple books, and which have jumped the proverbial shark? E. Flint , M. Maresca , R. Rogers , S. Swendson , B. Wright , L. Donahue *

Track sales?

My thoughts on tracking sales of books...

Do I track sales?
No.

Do I plan to track sales?
No.

 

Why?

Sales are not cookies in danger of burning if I'm not watching. They are going to be what they are going be whether my eyes are focused on them or elsewhere.

It boils down to:

Do I need one more thing on my plate?
No. I already feel like this:

(Now, now...all ass jokes and references need not be stated. I've already thought them and giggled incessantly.)

If I did track sales, sure, I'd see trends. I'd see numbers good and bad. Those would impact my decisions. I'd maybe advertise more, hype more, interview more, tweet more, fb more. Yanno, do anything but write more.

Kudos to those who can juggle it into the rest of their writerly activities. I willingly admit that those activities have every possibility of impacting and growing sales, which is of course a good thing I would like very much. It's not that I don't care. It's not that I'm too lazy to go look, though 'how to find sales info' is admittedly not presently in my arsenal of knowledge. It's not that I am unwilling to do promotional activities. What it is is: with work, two boys, a house, a yard, a dog, an aging mom...I fight for my writing time...and writing is where the passion, the emphasis, and the drive, is for me. It's the reward. If I weren't spending up to 40 hours a week at someone else's desk, if the boys were grown and on their own and they were no longer under my direct management, then sure, I can see how I'd have time to track sales and react to it accordingly. I'm not sure I'd find it any more interesting than I do now. I'm not a business person and never claimed to be.

However, I most assuredly am a writer.

Counting Non-Existent Sales

Sometimes, the weekly topic is one on which I have no authority to comment. This would be one of those times.

If I had sales to track, would I track them? You betcha. Would I track them with something of an obsession? Most likely. Would a lack of data drive me batshit? Absolutely.


Of far more important news, Jeffe's third book in the Covenant of Thorns eBook series released yesterday!

Rogue's Paradise
Book Three of Covenant of Thorns
Pregnant, possessed, and in love with a man I don't dare to trust—those are the consequences of the risks I took to save my life. But Faerie, the land of blood and magic, is filled with bitter ironies, and the bargains I made now threaten me and my unborn child.

The darkly sensual fae noble Rogue still tempts me to danger and desire. As we await the birth of our child, I've been forced to question whether our offspring is part of a bargain Rogue once made to save himself. He can't tell me the truth due to a spell the vicious Queen Titania has him under. Would he betray our family against his will? Could I ever forgive him if he does?

Rogue insists on an eternal commitment from me, even as Titania's forces close in on us. I don't know if Rogue and I can withstand her onslaught, or that of the beast within me. But I will not stop looking for answers—even if it brings the walls of Faerie crashing down.

Buy it Now:  Amazon     B&N      Carina Press

Tracking Sales Without Losing Your Mind

by @JeffeKennedy

This week's topic - Tracking Sales: Do You Do It and How? - is apropos as I have a book release tomorrow. Yes, Rogue's Paradise, the third book in the Covenant of Thorns series, comes out Monday, September 8!

A book release day can be so fraught. It's the final goodbye to the book in many ways - like sending your kid off to college or waving farewell on their wedding day. You're full of hopes and dreams for them and also teeming with nervous dread that something awful will happen. With a book, of course, a huge part of this is WILL IT SELL?

It's the inescapable metric, particularly for those of us who are not independently wealthy and are trying to make a self-supporting career of writing. At the same time, tracking sales feels - to me - like focusing on the wrong thing.

I've been having this ongoing conversation lately with my friend, Anne Calhoun. About making career decisions and what our goals as writers really are. Both of us agree that, if it were all about making money for us, we'd be stockbrokers. There are easier ways to make a lot of money. Last week on Word Whores, too, I talked about valuing personal happiness and how I work towards that. Part of that for me is not focusing too hard on sales.

So the answer to the first part of the question is, I don't track very closely. I don't try for real time much at all. Sometimes I see my Amazon ranking if someone points me there, and that's because it's good news. Really, I only want to see the happy-making stuff. Like when a bunch of tweets alerted me to Rogue's Pawn, book one in the Covenant of Thorns series, making #2 in Fantasy Romance on Amazon. After Dean Koontz, well-known Fantasy Romance author. *cough*

I sometimes look at the Amazon rankings for book one in my Twelve Kingdoms series, The Mark of the Tala, because I continue to be bemused - and pleasantly surprised - by how high the rankings are. There are a lot of people out there who perform the dubious alchemy of translating Almighty Amazon's sales rankings to copies sold and dollars generated, but I am not one.

That said, I *am* the Spreadsheet Queen. I do track my sales there, both by book and overall totals. I have charts that show which venues sell the most of each book and that track my sales by month (where I have that much detail - some of my royalties are reported quarterly or longer) for copies sold and my revenue. It's gotten more complicated now that the statements are funneled through my agency as well, but I input all the data. The most interesting metric is one I set up that calculates the total amount of money a book has earned for me divided by the number of days elapsed since its release. This gives me essentially a "dollars per day" metric. This ranges from, as of this posting, $100/day for a book I received an advance for (which complicates things), to $4/day real time sales for my longest-published book, to $0.09/day for my poorest performer. I like that way of parsing things, because it gives me a more objective sense of which books earn the best.

But I still love each and every one. I cry at all their weddings and graduations.