What do those Amazon stats mean?

[pbray]

Thanks to scott_lynch and eeknight for bringing the good news to rank-obsessed authors that the Titlez website is happy to enable your obsessive compulsive behavior.

There's even an article on interpreting Amazon sales rankings.

Before we all get carried away, we should remind ourselves that for traditional publishers Amazon represents a small portion of overall sales, and that the sales trends at Amazon may not reflect what's going on at brick & mortar stores. For instance, a mention on a popular blog site may spike your Amazon sales but do nothing for sales in traditional stores. That said, I see no reason why we can't dive right in to IRON AUTHOR: BOOK FACE-OFF.

The Titlez program is in a free beta period right now. I'm wondering how it will compare to the service offered by Books and Writers which tracks Amazon and BN.COM sales ranks for a fee.

Any folks out there currently subscribing to Books and Writers? I subscribed to them when the weekly reports were free, but problems with the data delivery and quality made me reluctant to sign up once they switched to a pay service.

Comments

[eeknight.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, didn't notice the "free" thing. I wonder what they're going to charge for this flavor of crack?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Good question. The Q&A's on their website are coy on this point. I'll bet they were waiting to see how many people signed up for the free beta to judge the demand.

For comparison, Books & Writers charges between $10-$50 a year, depending on how many books you are tracking. At the other end of the scale, Neilsen Bookscan charges hundreds of dollars for access to their comprehensive sales history.