Daniel J. Hogan ([info]danieljhogan) wrote,
@ 2008-01-10 14:05:00
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Entry tags:ads, amazon, b&n, pictures, print on demand, promote, sales, self-publishing

Day of Fantasy (which is every day for me)
Here is a flier for the book signing I'm doing in March along with [info]jimhines , the flier was designed by Dean Stahl (aka [info]wookiee71 ) - is going to be there as well. I had to shrink it down to fit in this blog - sorry Dean!



In other news, I got my December sales numbers from lulu.com the other day. I sold four copies during the month - woo hoo! That puts me at 94.
I got some interesting sales data last week courtesy of author/editor William Jones. He was able to look up my Nielson sales scan data for me - yes, the lameo system that TV uses to guess who is watching what is now being used for books. I'll try and sum up what I learned - first they don't count Amazon, so these are sales at places like Barnes & Noble.

Regions
17 copies sold in the East North Central region
3 copies in the Pacific region
2 copies sold in the South Atlantic region

Geographic Places
12 in Suburbs
8 in City
2 in Rural

Looks like I'm rockin' the suburbs. William also said that the number I need to shoot for is 1,000 copies sold, after that chain stores will take notice. I guess I have some more promotion to do!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that William said that chain stores triple their Nielson scan data, so he said my 22 copies actually count as 66. So, considering that - I only need to sell 333.333 copies to hopefully get noticed by the chains (yeah, only) - and these all have to be sales through a store that actually contributes to this data. Interesting stuff.


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[info]jimhines
2008-01-10 07:42 pm UTC (link)
Could you clarify the point about chain stores tripling their data? I'm not sure what that means.

So William thinks 1000 is the goal, eh? (I don't know one way or the other; I'm just interested to see how this side of things works.)

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[info]danieljhogan
2008-01-10 08:24 pm UTC (link)
Not I'm not sure either but in William's own words from the file he sent me:

"Also, keep in mind that Nielson does not track conventions, direct LuLu sales, or any store that does not use a barcode scanner. Usually, chains multiply Nielson sales by 3 (X3) to get a better guess of sales. So the 22 copies would become 66 copies.

The number you want to work for is 1000 copies. That is the base rating that a chain is interested in, and that means they might buy 50 copies and put them in your best selling region to see how they go. If that works, then they expand. Of course, the stores don't count DISCOUNT & OTHER sales. So promote on your website, and urge people at conventions to order your books from stores, or point them to a store that already has them."

Yeah, so I dunno why they do it either - there must be some kind of formula behind it. Maybe because they don't track Amazon or convention sales they just triple the numbers to get a rough of idea of other sales data? ::shrug::

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[info]jimhines
2008-01-10 08:30 pm UTC (link)
Ah, got it. He's right that Bookscan doesn't track all sales. They get the major chains and some independents. I'm 99% sure Amazon sales are tracked on Bookscan too. I don't know for certain how chains manipulate bookscan numbers, but that seems a little high to me. I could easily be wrong, though.

In my case, I think Bookcan represents about 2/3 of my actual sales. That's a best-guess based on Bookscan numbers vs. my royalty statement, neither of which are 100% ground in reality. But a bigger percentage of mine are selling in the chains, which means your ratio would be different. There's also a difference between paperback and hardcover (hardcovers sell more to libraries, which tend to fly beneath Bookscan's radar).

It's messy, and I've yet to find a clear or reliable answer. Personally, I would love the idea that Bookscan only caught a third of my sales. I'd have earned out my advance on both books by now :-)

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