Saturday, October 30, 2010

Sales Rankings

Okay, I admit it. I have Amazon sales ranking fever. Every once in a while (or every two seconds) I check to see what ranking my various books have on Amazon. It's a horrible, time-consuming illness. But I need to know exactly where my career is at! Of course, just checking Amazon isn't enough. I actually use three different websites to keep track of the rankings.


The first is Aaron Shepard's Sales Rank Express. Doesn't Aaron look friendly? This allows the user to look at the rankings in "top selling" order and get a quick look at other countries. C'mon Japan, just buy one book. One book, that's all I'm asking.



The second website I use is TitleZ. Here you can sign up your books and see the "historical" sales of your various novels and even compare up to five of them at once. It's a good way to look back at your career and see where the high point was and then watch your slide into oblivion (also known as 5 millionth bestseller on Amazon).


By far my favourite is NovelRank. At this site you have to register your books and it will keep track of them from that day forward. At first I didn't see how effective the site was until my books were tracked for a couple of months. Now I can look at their total sales (and it does actually break down how many copies you sell, using a complicated x-y-market=geewhiz formula). You are able to choose in which order you want the books ranked (Sales/RecentSales/Monthly sales) and you can see how your books are doing head to head. 

As you can see by the graphic above Jolted is outselling The Dark Deeps by 26-24! What an exciting battle. It's like a football game without the action. Who will win at the end of the month? Which book will sell better over time? Which will make me the most money (right now I'm cheering for Dark Deeps since it's in hardcover).  As you can see the NovelRank keeps tabs on the last time one of your books sold. 20 Hours! That's a lifetime (for a gnat, anyway). Good golly, my career is already on the way down.

Anyway, kidding aside I appreciate the way NovelRank works and how it allows me to change the format.

Hmmm....maybe I should just be seeing a therapist instead...



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