Tag Archives: Sales

Author Central and NovelRank Sales Rank Tracking Comparison

On December 10th, Amazon announced a new set of features available for free through Author Central: BookScan sales and historical sales rank data. Naturally, since at first glance these seem to be a similar feature set to what NovelRank offers, I took a look (along with thousands of other authors). After careful analysis, I decided to write this post and help inform current and future NovelRank users about the key differences and benefits. I’ve always said, if there is a 10,000 lb elephant in the room, put the spotlight on it.

First, a few quick links. If you want to read some FAQs about Author Central Sales Info, login to your Author Central Account, or learn more about BookScan, then take a look and then come back here. Otherwise, let me refresh your mind on a few key points.

BookScan data represents Nielsen tracking of 75% of book sales through retail and online providers, as identified through the Amazon provided graphic to the right. Strangely, Amazon is not supplying their actual sales data to their suppliers (i.e. authors), but rather a 3rd party’s data. Granted, it offers a broader scope, but Amazon still is not providing actual data (like it does with Kindle sales for self-publishers through the digital text platform). BookScan data does not track Kindle sales, and thus authors cannot get this data through Author Central.

The sales rank tracking provided is a daily history of sales rank, collected at 11am PST (7am GMT). It goes back as far as October of 2009 or when you joined Author Central, if that date is after October of 2009. This matches NovelRank’s oldest tracking, as it launched in Oct 2009 as well. However, within 24 hours, Sales Rank can fluctuate dramatically providing valuable hourly sales data analysis.

None-the-less, I think there is some great information here, but I’m still happy to have NovelRank. Below is a breakdown of the strengths of each of these services.

Author Central Strengths

BookScan data includes retail sailes
Geographical data offers touring authors useful data
Sales Rank history is available without prior request (as long as you had an Author Central account)
100% reliable sales rank collection from the source

Author Central Weaknesses

No sales data for Kindle ebooks
Sales data only available for the most recent 4 weeks
Only available for Amazon.com (no international support yet)
Limited to your own books (no competitor or research tracking)
Sales Rank recorded only once per day
Data updated weekly (not real-time)

NovelRank Strengths

Hourly Sales Rank tracking
Support for Amazon UK, Canada, Germany, France, and Japan
Ability to track books by others; for competitor or book development research
Support for Kindle books on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Historical sales estimates available beyond recent weeks
Downloadable sales and Sales Rank history (CSV)
RSS feeds, widgets, and other integrations

NovelRank Weaknesses

Sales estimates are not 100% accurate
Sales estimates are based on only Amazon sales
No geographical sales data
Sales Rank data only available from when tracking was initiated

I’m excited for the benefits to authors that Amazon is providing, but I’m still thrilled to be offering this free service, NovelRank, to authors and publishers across the world with more specific needs. If you continue to enjoy this service, remember to consider a donation to support it.

Book Sales Rankings

Pursuit of Honor book cover
I was recently asked what amount of book sales lead to rankings averaging 100, 1000, etc. Put another way, how many books would an author have to sell in a given month to have an average ranking for the month of 1000? So, I dug back into the book sales estimates and came up with 3 examples.

This is based on data on Amazon.com only. For Amazon.co.uk, you can roughly estimate that it takes only 80% of the number of sales on Amazon.com to equate to the same average ranking. For Canada, Germany, Japan, and France, it is approximately 65%, though there is not enough data in NovelRank to depend on that percentage.

Sales Rank Average: 1000 (paperback, hardcover, etc)

Example book: Pursuit of Honor by Vince Flynn
About 250 copies were sold to maintain a sales rank around 1000. That makes it 8 books per day, with a sale occurring every 3 hours, or maybe 2 books selling every 6 hours! Either way, this is a very healthy sales rank.

Sales Rank Average: 100 (paperback, hardcover, etc)

Example book: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery and Alison Anderson
Almost 2000 copies were sold in May to garner an average sales rank of 106. That is a selling rate of at least 3 books per hour! What is likely is that this number may actually be notably higher, as sales rank changes are less defined or varied at this level, however it is hard to verify.

Sales Rank Average: 2000 (Kindle Edition books)

Example book: In the Mood by Ellen Fisher
Selling approximately 500 kindle books a month will lead to an average sales rank around 2000 for your book. To do this, you need to sell about 16 books a day or 1 book every 90 minutes.

Note: This Kindle sales estimate is based upon real sales data from Amazon DTP provided to me from the author. NovelRank is currently underestimating for Kindle Edition books with a Sales Rank below 4000.

Hopefully this is enlightening for you. Remember, the strength of NovelRank is not in raw numbers; You will get those from your publisher eventually, but rather in understanding the fluctuations so you can attribute your best marketing efforts to the strongest sales bumps in near real-time.

Disclaimer: NovelRank book sales estimates are based on fluctuations of sales rank and thus there are many factors (another blog post coming soon) that can cause for more sales to occur than is estimated by NovelRank. These numbers are estimates.

Improved Multiple Sale Tracking for Amazon Kindle eBooks

Thanks to author feedback from authors with access to Amazon DTP (Digital Text Platform) and thus real-time sales numbers for Kindle books, I was finally able to add more accurate sales estimates for Kindle Books. This includes tracking up to three sales per hour. For Kindle books selling as frequently as 7 books per day, the accuracy is up to 95% for sales estimates. For Kindle ebooks selling 30 or less per month, accuracy should be closer to 98%.

There is still room for improvement, but previously NovelRank’s accuracy was at 78% for books selling 3 or more per day or more specifically, multi-sale hours. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to retroactively run sales history through the new formulas, so the accuracy is improved as of today moving forward. In all cases, including the future, NovelRank is underestimated book sales estimates on Kindle Edition books. I feel this is a better route that overestimating sales by 5%. Better safe than sorry.

Thanks again for the great feedback from authors to improve the accuracy of NovelRank book sales estimates on Amazon Kindle books.

Update: May 30, 2010 2:01am MDT
The new formula has been retroactively applied to all Kindle books tracked prior to 5/1/2010. You may notice slightly different sales numbers for your Kindle Edition books than you did previously.

Chart Amazon Book Sales: Tracking Books

I’ve been putting this off for too long, and finally took the initiative and got it done this morning in about 3 hours. You will now see a new Chart Type option when viewing your book on NovelRank: Book Sales. Book sales tracking has existed since NovelRank launched, but there was no way to see a chart or bar graph of the information, till now. Remember, these are still sales estimates, with accuracy decreasing for books selling more than 100 copies a month.

I have also updated the Download to Excel/CSV option so monthly Amazon sales estimates for the entire history of NovelRank tracking will be available. Better late than never. Here is another quick example with more domains present:

Finally, since I was in charting, I fixed a bug where you would see in the Domains drop-down menu all Amazon domains, even if your book was not tracked on that domain. That has been fixed, so only relevant domains will be displayed. Please hold your applause.