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Sales Of The Goddess' Books; How can we track 'em?
Topic Started: Apr 14 2008, 11:20 PM (521 Views)
ready
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After reading a comment in another thread I had an "AHA" moment.
How can we track sales of upcoming books by Ms. :cherryh: ? Is there any consolidated listing of the number of volumes in English or otherwise that the Goddess has had published?
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Surtac
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A fascinating question, ready, and one I've pondered often. There is a thing called Bookscan over here that supposedly tracks book sales at POS, but I don't think the data is generally available. I think it's more of an industry service, chargeable for access by publishers and so on.

But I would dearly like to see some real data - in some ways the publishing industry is itself a real closed book. :HB:

:invert
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starexplorer
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Any chance She has the information?
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Felicitous Sk8er
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I have reason to believe :cherryh: has at least approx. info. I also suspect the info is not widely disseminated.
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Chanor-ji

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There are several methods of calculating sales figures. As Surtac mentioned, Bookscan, a POS count, is frequently used. The problem with Bookscan is that there are a lot of booksellers like myself who do not participate.

Another major method is tracking how many books are shipped from the major wholesalers and add it to the number of books shipped directly to booksellers by the publishers. The big fly in that ointment is that it fails to take into account "returns". Bookselling is one of the very few retail operations in which store owners can return unsold product for just about full credit. So say I order ten copies of the Goddess's latest tour de force. After six months or so, I've only sold three of those. I shove the remaining seven into a box, send them back to Penguin and receive credit towards my outstanding bills. The Goddess was originally credited with sales of ten books, but since I returned those seven, those seven are deducted from the amount Penguin owes her. (This is why Sk8er said that :cherryh: knows "approximately" the sales figures. The royalty payment :cherryh: receives in January shows the ten books I bought from Penguin. The seven books I return are deducted from the royalty statement she receives in June. It's an on-going process that has many, many authors gnashing their teeth because they believe the publishing houses withhold too much from their royalty payments in order to cover returns.)

To be honest with you, I don't think anyone has a truly accurate figure -- not even the corporate bean counters.

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ready
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Thanks for clarifying that Chanor-ji. If that is so how does the New York Times determine its' rankings on the BestSellers List? Is that based on orders to Booksellers? Are pre-orders a oart of that equation? Is there any way that we as fans can affect the popularity rankings of the Goddess' books. If pre-orders of Cyteen II at Amazon will positively affect her status on the NYT Best
sellers list then I'm all for it.
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pence

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I don't know how they do it now, but in the old - pre computer days- they TELEPHONED -the bookstores, having a list that they assumed would be best sellers and asked us what had sold during the previous week! Then asked us for figures for anything not on the list. Real scientific huh! Especially if the single clerk on duty was trying to juggle two deliveries and a pestiferous customer at the same time. ( The store I worked in rarely soled anything on the prefab list so you can imagine how accurate the data was.
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Chanor-ji

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Quote:
 
If that is so how does the New York Times determine its' rankings on the BestSellers List?


Personally, I suspect that the Times just pulls the figures out of its a**.

Pence: That system is long gone. #1 -- Because of computers and the internet, nobody needs to phone anyone for anything. #2 -- Several years ago, the independent booksellers collectively decided to no longer participate in providing sales figures to the NYT. The reasoning was: The indies hand sold many of those books til they reached NYT best seller status, then the chains swooped in, discounted the bestsellers at 40% -- a discount the indies simply could not match -- resulting in the indies losing any further sales. Through the ABA -- the American Booksellers Association -- the indies publish their own bestsellers lists. Both Borders and Barnes & Noble went to a system of declaring their own best seller list based on each chains own sales. (However, both those lists are extremely suspect as it is not unknown for publishers to purchase spots on those "best seller" lists.) The best seller list I would trust the most is the one put out by Publishers Weekly -- the bookselling industry's rag. The NYT supposedly gets its figures from "reporting stores", stores that have agreed to provide sales figures to the Times.

Quote:
 
If pre-orders of Cyteen II at Amazon will positively affect her status on the NYT Best
sellers list then I'm all for it.


Pre-orders at Amazon may be helpful -- if Amazon is a "reporting" store. And to be honest with you, I don't know. I haven't worked in a general bookstore for nearly thirteen years and I dropped my subscription to Publishers Weekly several years ago because it costs too much, so I'm not really up on that stuff.

I can tell you that "street dates" have become a really big thing these days. Publishers demand that bookstores hide certain books in their back rooms until a certain day. (Remember the big hoo-ha over some web seller breaking the street date for the last Harry Potter?) What that does is maximize the impact of the first week's sales, giving a book it's best chance to hit the NYT's best sellers list. So if Amazon actually ships books to meet street date, and if Amazon is a "reporting" store, then presales will help. :grin
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pence

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I confess that I do occasionally check the B S List - to find out what NOT to read.
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Chanor-ji

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Agreed, Pence. You have to remember that the books that sell the most appeal to the lowest common denominator. (How else can you explain that L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics was on the PW paperback best seller list for a good three years or so? :rofl: )
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Felicitous Sk8er
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Regarding Hubbard's book:

I read some years ago that said book was purchased in bulk by organization members, returned to said organization, then re-sold...to be re-purchased, re-returned, and re-sold in an endless cycle -- in order to grossly inflate sales figures. I can't recall the source, but suspect the anecdote is probably true.

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Chanor-ji

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Sk8er, I've heard that rumor, too.

On the other hand, I was working for a chain bookstore during that three or so year run, and we sold an awful lot of them to people who I doubt were Hubbardites.

(My favorite memory of those days was the customer who asked me if the store carried that book, you know -- Diuretics.)
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Aelith
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:ot2 Chanor-ji, there is a thread on LT of just such questions put to librarians and Bookshop people. Hope you enjoy it and add yours.
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Aja Jin
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Chanor-ji,Apr 19 2008
04:35 PM
(My favorite memory of those days was the customer who asked me if the store carried that book, you know -- Diuretics.)

:grin

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