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

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

This is a terrible, terrible thing to do to authors. Except the idea of IRON AUTHOR is so much fun... :)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It is comical. I wish I had a 2005 title so I could challenge you to a numbers face-off. The mystery ingredient: SNARK!

If it's still free as May gets nearer, we can set up a faceoff with Thunderbird Falls and The First Betrayal :-)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*takes a giant bite of a hardback book and stares intently into the camera* May the best author win! MUAHAHAHAHAH!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Do we get a wardrobe allowance? I want the chairman's costumes.