Amazon Now Offering Bookscan Access to Authors
Amber Stults tweeted a link to an article in the L.A. Times, announcing that Amazon is now offering access to Bookscan data through the Amazon Author Central program.
I’ve checked my Author Central page, and what do you know — I’ve got pages and pages of shiny, wonderful sales data. This appears to be pretty much the full Bookscan data for all of my books, not just the Amazon sales.
ETA: Amazon is providing a four-week window of sales data. Meaning you’ll be able to see how your books are doing over the past four weeks, but won’t be able to check back to see sales from six months ago.
They’re also providing more information about Amazon ranks tracked over time for your books.
If you need me, I’ll be having a datagasm…
Tweets that mention Jim C. Hines » Amazon Now Offering Bookscan Access to Authors -- Topsy.com
December 9, 2010 @ 11:18 am
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Josh Vogt, TimAkers, Phillip Creighton, Jabberwocky Literary, Jim C. Hines and others. Jim C. Hines said: New Post: Amazon Now Offering Bookscan Access to Authors http://bit.ly/evQDKX […]
Amity
December 9, 2010 @ 1:50 pm
Word of warning for kidlit authors — I noticed in tweets from agent Jennifer Laughran that Bookscan can be highly inaccurate. Kid books are often sold to libraries, to schools, in book clubs, etc, and Bookscan doesn’t follow those. So please don’t hypervenalate if your numbers are low and you write to an audience YA and younger (especially the younger you go). Not sure how many of those authors follow this blog, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Jim C. Hines
December 9, 2010 @ 1:54 pm
Bookscan does not capture 100% of sales. Amazon has a list of stores that report to Bookscan in their documentation.
So no, it’s not 100% accurate. It is, however, a better tool than anything else authors have available, short of auditing the publisher’s books.
Amity
December 9, 2010 @ 4:27 pm
Oh, it IS exciting. It’s just something to keep in mind.