Kindle sales reports

Crusader · 03-15-2011, 08:43 AM

For those of you self-publishing on the Kindle. How does the sales report work? How often is it updated and does it show both .uk and. com sales or are they shown separately?

dworth · 03-15-2011, 09:39 AM

US and UK sales are shown seperately, and you will be paid seperately in dollars and sterling respectively. Sales are reported not exactly in real time, but at least every hour or so. Month to date shows sales accrued during the current calendar month. Last six weeks shows a weekly breakdown of the previous six calendar weeks. Previous months shows previous sales by calendar month.

Rather annoyingly there isn't a way of totting up your sales and royalties except by adding up each month's totals yourself.

MartinC · 03-18-2011, 09:22 AM

NovelRank gives a good-looking summary, and it does seem to tot up sales over the past year (I haven't been at it long enough to know how well this works). It also seems to combine reports from Amazon .com and co.uk. You can export to Excel too.

Most interesting of all, you can get figures for other people's books...

randyflycaster · 03-18-2011, 09:50 AM

You get the reports on your Kindle Direct Publishing page.
Randy

sportourer1 · 04-13-2011, 03:47 PM

These reports and royalty reports are a real mess

C. R. Hindmarsh · 04-14-2011, 07:24 PM

You can also get reports on AuthorCentral, an Amazon-owned site. I'm not sure how often they update though.

sakman70 · 05-06-2011, 09:30 AM

Anyone else seeing 'accuracy issues' with NovelRank? Even their footnote says something about the possibility of the numbers being "understated". For example, for March it tells me I sold 345 sales, yet my publisher pulled the data for amazon sales and quoted me 675. That's more than a little understatement. Just don't know if that's of any use. (Of course I like the publisher's numbers, and since that's what I'm being paid on...) I'm just concerned because if I go with a self-published title in the future I'm not sure how accurate any of the tracking will be. But hopefully other tools will be available in that case...

Todd Young · 05-10-2011, 02:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sakman70

Anyone else seeing 'accuracy issues' with NovelRank? Even their footnote says something about the possibility of the numbers being "understated". For example, for March it tells me I sold 345 sales, yet my publisher pulled the data for amazon sales and quoted me 675. That's more than a little understatement. Just don't know if that's of any use. (Of course I like the publisher's numbers, and since that's what I'm being paid on...) I'm just concerned because if I go with a self-published title in the future I'm not sure how accurate any of the tracking will be. But hopefully other tools will be available in that case...

I think you might have to sign up with novel rank to get more accurate figures. (I could be wrong about this.) But I don't see the point anyway. You can see your sales figures on your reports, and they seem to be updated several times a day.

Andrew Ashling · 05-22-2011, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sakman70

Anyone else seeing 'accuracy issues' with NovelRank? Even their footnote says something about the possibility of the numbers being "understated". For example, for March it tells me I sold 345 sales, yet my publisher pulled the data for amazon sales and quoted me 675. That's more than a little understatement. Just don't know if that's of any use. (Of course I like the publisher's numbers, and since that's what I'm being paid on...) I'm just concerned because if I go with a self-published title in the future I'm not sure how accurate any of the tracking will be. But hopefully other tools will be available in that case...

Amazon doesn't make their sales figures public. What Novelrank and similar sites do is log in to the ranking and try to deduce whether a sale has taken place. This is educated guesswork. In my case they seem to miss about 15 to 20 % of my sales. If you have several sales in the same hour they probably will miss all of them but one.
Also, they only start tracking a book when someone puts it on their list. Sales in the same month prior to that are not included.

For your own records Amazon itself gives you exact figures. Novelrank is interesting to see how you are doing compared to others in your niche, IMHO.

neilmarr · 05-23-2011, 04:37 AM

Just a wee aside: We have our entire catalogue in paperback and ebook editions and when our additional registration as BeWrite Books LLC USA kicked in last October we were able to deal with all major and minor retail stores.

When our book-keeper calculated the six-monthly author royalties in March, we were amazed. Not only had we sold more ebooks over that short period than all ebook sales combined over the past decade, but Kindle sales accounted for much more than all other retail outlets combined.

Hope this is a good omen for some of you. Best wishes. Neil

G J Lau · 05-23-2011, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilmarr

When our book-keeper calculated the six-monthly author royalties in March, we were amazed. Not only had we sold more ebooks over that short period than all ebook sales combined over the past decade, but Kindle sales accounted for much more than all other retail outlets combined.

Hope this is a good omen for some of you. Best wishes. Neil

Agree. Just about all my sales are on Amazon. Not surprising, I guess. I'm still trying to figure out why B&N hasn't kicked in more. Could be the ways in which my stuff is categorized. It's all a mystery.

Mel Comley · 05-23-2011, 12:34 PM

Yep, Novel rank doesn't work, not sure what it's purpose is actually.

You get all your reports on KDP, where you uploaded your book there is a report heading, press that and you'll see Month to date unit sales, open that and you'll get 3 stores, UK, US and De (Germany).

Go back and then you'll see your last 6 weeks sales and monthly sales.

Your weekly sales show up every Sunday.

Hope that helps.;-)

neilmarr · 05-24-2011, 04:21 AM

By the way, something else that surprised us with our first sales after being able to deal direct with US-based ebook stores in October 2010 was -- in spite of their (I think) great hardware but rotten library software -- second biggest sales figures came from Sony -- not B&N, Apple or Kobo as we'd guessed. Sales direct from our own wee site also, unexpectedly, peaked, even though Mobi, ePub and PDF editions (DRM-free and with no geo-restrictions on sale) had been available there long before our additional US registration allowed us to deal with the stores direct. Neil

03-15-2011, 08:43 AM	#1
Crusader Space Cadet Posts: 1,180 Karma: 4030536 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: South Africa Device: Sony PRS-T1, Cybook Opus, Kobo Glo	Kindle sales reports For those of you self-publishing on the Kindle. How does the sales report work? How often is it updated and does it show both .uk and. com sales or are they shown separately?

03-18-2011, 09:22 AM	#3
MartinC Hanger on Posts: 148 Karma: 1355233 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Dorset, UK Device: Kindle 3, Galaxy S, Sony PRS-505, Sony tablet	NovelRank gives a good-looking summary, and it does seem to tot up sales over the past year (I haven't been at it long enough to know how well this works). It also seems to combine reports from Amazon .com and co.uk. You can export to Excel too. Most interesting of all, you can get figures for other people's books... Last edited by MartinC; 03-23-2011 at 06:34 PM.

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03-15-2011, 09:39 AM	#2
dworth Zealot Posts: 140 Karma: 2094632 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Bradford, UK Device: kindle pc	US and UK sales are shown seperately, and you will be paid seperately in dollars and sterling respectively. Sales are reported not exactly in real time, but at least every hour or so. Month to date shows sales accrued during the current calendar month. Last six weeks shows a weekly breakdown of the previous six calendar weeks. Previous months shows previous sales by calendar month. Rather annoyingly there isn't a way of totting up your sales and royalties except by adding up each month's totals yourself.

03-18-2011, 09:50 AM	#4
randyflycaster Zealot Posts: 113 Karma: 1000858 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: New York City Device: Sony 350	You get the reports on your Kindle Direct Publishing page. Randy

04-13-2011, 03:47 PM	#5
sportourer1 Writer Posts: 117 Karma: 560236 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: London UK Device: none	These reports and royalty reports are a real mess

04-14-2011, 07:24 PM	#6
C. R. Hindmarsh Wordslinger Posts: 12 Karma: 20000 Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: New Zealand Device: iPod	You can also get reports on AuthorCentral, an Amazon-owned site. I'm not sure how often they update though.

05-06-2011, 09:30 AM	#7
sakman70 Member Posts: 20 Karma: 556842 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Upstate NY Device: kindle (droid)	Anyone else seeing 'accuracy issues' with NovelRank? Even their footnote says something about the possibility of the numbers being "understated". For example, for March it tells me I sold 345 sales, yet my publisher pulled the data for amazon sales and quoted me 675. That's more than a little understatement. Just don't know if that's of any use. (Of course I like the publisher's numbers, and since that's what I'm being paid on...) I'm just concerned because if I go with a self-published title in the future I'm not sure how accurate any of the tracking will be. But hopefully other tools will be available in that case...

05-23-2011, 04:37 AM	#10
neilmarr neilmarr Posts: 7,216 Karma: 6000059 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Monaco-Menton, France Device: sony	Just a wee aside: We have our entire catalogue in paperback and ebook editions and when our additional registration as BeWrite Books LLC USA kicked in last October we were able to deal with all major and minor retail stores. When our book-keeper calculated the six-monthly author royalties in March, we were amazed. Not only had we sold more ebooks over that short period than all ebook sales combined over the past decade, but Kindle sales accounted for much more than all other retail outlets combined. Hope this is a good omen for some of you. Best wishes. Neil

05-23-2011, 12:34 PM	#12
Mel Comley Addict Posts: 318 Karma: 602031 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: France Device: none	Yep, Novel rank doesn't work, not sure what it's purpose is actually. You get all your reports on KDP, where you uploaded your book there is a report heading, press that and you'll see Month to date unit sales, open that and you'll get 3 stores, UK, US and De (Germany). Go back and then you'll see your last 6 weeks sales and monthly sales. Your weekly sales show up every Sunday. Hope that helps.;-)

05-24-2011, 04:21 AM	#13
neilmarr neilmarr Posts: 7,216 Karma: 6000059 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Monaco-Menton, France Device: sony	By the way, something else that surprised us with our first sales after being able to deal direct with US-based ebook stores in October 2010 was -- in spite of their (I think) great hardware but rotten library software -- second biggest sales figures came from Sony -- not B&N, Apple or Kobo as we'd guessed. Sales direct from our own wee site also, unexpectedly, peaked, even though Mobi, ePub and PDF editions (DRM-free and with no geo-restrictions on sale) had been available there long before our additional US registration allowed us to deal with the stores direct. Neil

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