Amazon Sales

The Beat has just collected a number of recent scattered posts about Amazon sales and contextualized them for its comics-reading (and -making) audience, making it clear we're in the middle of another period of the Amazon style of Kremlin-watching.

So I thought I'd share something that may be vaguely useful.

A few years back, I did a quick cheat sheet to estimate Amazon sales for print titles, based on Amazon's overall sales rank. Now, before I give you the fruits of my inquisitive afternoon, a few disclaimers:

• I did this about three years ago, and have not updated it -- and sales patterns may have shifted (though I believe they're still broadly correct).
• This was only for print books; e-books may have a different pattern, and I've never investigated them.
• This assumes steady sales, which is not always true. Some books spike because of a media hit, and then drop as swiftly as they rose.
• Sales volume of books varies greatly on Amazon from week to week, with obvious peaks in early December and late August and other spikes driven by specific books, media events, or Alien Space Bats. So this is only a vague guide.
• The top ranks of sales are spikier and more variable than the lower tiers, so those numbers will be less accurate overall. The top twenty, in particular, often sell substantial multiples of the books just beneath them.

With that in mind, here's what, more or less, an Amazon sales rank means:

500,000+ -- probably didn't sell a copy this week
250,000 -- 3-5 books a week
100,000 -- 5-7 books a week
25,000 -- 40-50 books a week
10,000 -- 50-75 books a week
5,000 -- 100-150 books a week
1000 -- 200-300 books a week
500 -- 400-500 books a week
100 -- 1000+ books a week

So if your best author friend burbles that her novel The Dark Mace of Aka'Fujjji has been in the Amazon Top 1000 for 6 weeks, you can now estimate that she's sold at least 1500-2000 books. And, if I know authors, hate her for it.

Euphemisms

Reading Shelf Awareness this morning -- particularly this article about Kobo describing the difference between their "regular customers" and the influx of new business from ABA stores -- I hit a term I'm not familiar with.

That term is "active romance."

My assumption -- since that's the way my mind always goes -- is that the "active" in "active romance" refers to the characters' genitals, and this is another way of saying "erotica" or "hot romance" or "spicy romance" or whatever last decade's term was; that this indicates a romance with a lot of sex in it, or a book with a lot of sex in it that tries to sneak in as a romance because the main characters stay together. [1]

Anyone out there able to confirm or deny?


[1] I make this distinction because romances, like every other mature genre, have important genre and subgenre markers, and so there are things that look like romance to civilians that real romance readers consider the equivalent of Michael Crichton for SF readers. I don't know enough to define all of those markers, but I'm smart enough to realize that serious romance readers care about them.

You Have Another Chance to Buy Matthew Hughes Books

Honestly, folks, if you haven't bought Hughes's excellent far-future SF/fantasy mysteries Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira -- a fine series of freestanding novels concerning the greatest discriminator of the penultimate age of the Earth -- I'm not sure how many more times I can tell you how excellent they are or burble once again about Hughes's sparkling prose.

But would the fact that you can now get those books in electronic form for the low, low price of only $2.99 entice you? Even better, it's direct from Hughes himself, so if you're the kind of reader who obsesses about fairness and wants to see the author get the best deal, this is exactly the offer you want.

So what are you waiting for?

Carving Out a New Nook in the Market

When Barnes & Noble hints that they're going to slow-track their Nook e-reader business and "focus more on licensing their content to other device makers" -- as reported by The New York Times on Sunday -- what on earth are they talking about?

B&N is a retailer; they don't own the content they sell. They don't even own the relationship with the content providers -- that's all on the publishers. So how can they possibly find a successful business strategy out of trying to shove themselves into the middle of a marketplace that has been aggressively shedding middlemen for several years?

Are they trying to imply that they think Nook technology is so special and unique -- unlike a thousand other e-readers, most of which failed -- that they can live on licensing it to some other company that wants to beat its head against Amazon's predatory discounts for a few years?

Seriously, is there any strategy that could conceivably work behind that quote, or is it just bland waffling to hide the true cluelessness beneath?

Borrowing E-Books

PW today has an article with lots of numbers -- though surprisingly little analysis or thought -- about Amazon's e-book borrowing program, part of its Amazon Prime subscription business. It burbles about how "the monthly pool for borrowed e-books in January grew to $1.7 million, the largest in the history of the program" without ever explaining how this pool is defined, how and why the value of the pool fluctuates, or how it works.

I assume this is because Amazon, as usual, is being deeply opaque, and only releasing a few numbers carefully chosen to make them look as good as possible. As far as I can tell, the "pool" is set by Amazon fiat -- they decide how much money they feel like spending on ebook "borrowing" that month, and then divide it up according to some unspecified algorithm. (There's clearly at least a breakdown geographically, since there's both a "global fund" and a "monthly pool," though their relationship is not made clear.)

I would have to dig into the Kindle Direct Publishing agreement to be sure, but my guess is that Amazon has not promised to give any money to the authors of these ebooks, and that they're papering over that in their ongoing attempt to convert as many of their customers as possible to Prime. (Because subscription revenue is what everyone wants -- particularly when you run a website and no one can call you on the phone to cancel.)

So authors should take note: Amazon may have decided to give you $2.23 per ebook "borrowed" in January, which is potentially higher than you would have made from a sale in that same period. But every piece of that transaction -- and every penny of resulting revenue -- is under Amazon's complete control; it looks like they don't have to pay you a cent for that "borrow" if they decide (after the month is over, like this time) not to.

And don't get me started on "borrowing" ebooks. Do you have a digital file in your possession? Then it only expires and leaves your possession if you (through choice or laziness or ineptitude) let it do so -- once you have a digital file, there are plenty of tools for any of us to copy and save and transmute it. So it's only "borrowing" by courtesy -- or only "borrowing" in the legal language laid out by the people giving you contracts to sign.

Some People I Know May Need This

This would go on the tumblr, if I weren't deliberately putting all content here to make it seem more lived-in and cozy.

(via one of those massively parallel content farms I refuse to link to.)

And this is now the second time within a week that I've wanted to create the tag "Snap Snap Wink Wink Grin Grin," which means I have to do it.

More Books Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Most people will look at these pictures of an Amazon warehouse and talk about how big, complicated, and organized it is.

I must have been working in finance/supply management publishing for too long, because what I see is no automation, massive amounts of handwork, and those unfortunately oddly sized objects (known as books) which cause trouble for robots to pick and pack, as they would in a proper warehouse. It's sad but bracing to realize that one is never happy with anything.

(Oh, and if this drives you to think of buying something-or-other from that particular retail behemoth, here is a handy link to allow you to do so.)

The Great Amazon Squeeze, Once Again

This week, Jeff Bezos admitted what numerous teardown analyses have shown: that Amazon sells its Kindle devices at "cost" to drive content sales. There's no indication of how optimistic Amazon is when it determines its "cost," so the general suspicion in publishing that they actually sell devices at a slight loss is still entirely plausible.

And those with memories that stretch back more than a couple of years remember that the famous $9.99 Kindle price point was also, in the vast majority of cases, selling at a loss. Since the end of the great antitrust suit means that Amazon is free to once again discount major-publisher books below its own cost, is there anyone who doesn't believe that Amazon will do so again?


(The comparison in that Forbes article is with videogames, where Sony, Microsoft, etc, do take a small loss on each $300-$500 console...but then make that up by making hefty profits on each piece of $60 software for that console, plus the gravy of direct-to-consumer DLC. I don't need to point out the differences between that and the book market, do I?)


So, to review: Amazon sells hardware at what is at best a breakeven price to sell more content, and then sells content at a loss to maintain lock-in with their customers. It must be nice to have a pile of money so large that you can burn it off idly like that.

But, if I owned Amazon stock, I know I'd be screaming right now.

Stating the Obvious

This story is a week old, but I neglected to mention it when it hit: Amazon declares that Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy is the highest-selling series ever for them in the US.

This does not mean that Collins's books have sold more copies overall than, for example, J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, which was the prior record-holder. And it doesn't mean any of the things implied in Sara Nelson's self-lauding statement at the link.

What it means -- and what everyone who works in publishing already knows, but doesn't usually like to say in public -- is that Amazon is capturing an ever-larger share of the book business, which means that they sell a larger percent of books now than they did ten years ago -- so of course the big sellers now are bigger for Amazon than the big sellers were ten years ago. (Look for a similar statement about those "Fifty Shades of Grey" books in another year, especially if a movie does get made.)

This is good if you think that a single retailer should dominate the entire retail landscape for a particular kind of product. If you don't think that's such a good thing, your mileage may vary.

But what the statement really is saying is "we own the book market now, suckers." So you might as well learn to love Big Brother.

A Little Levity for a Friday

These may not actually be the absolute 10 Worst Book Covers in the History of Literature, but they're definitely on the shortlist.

My favorite is right here:

Double Penetrator! Try to tell me that was inadvertent! Just try!

Ready for Another Tour of the Sublimely Hideous Javitz Center

So I've gotten my marching orders for this year's Book Expo America (BEA, the book-industry convention that I'm old and dull enough to still think of as ABA), where, for the very first time, I will be working official hours in the Wiley booth. [1]

(I'm not sure if that means that there's a rigorous five-year vetting period, or if I'm one of the dwindling number of people who care enough to go at all; I've been in publishing long enough that going to BEA was a perk -- which I didn't get for more than a decade -- so it still feels thrilling.)

Anyway, I'll be demonstrating something -- I believe our enhanced ebooks, or other techy stuff; there is training promised, but it hasn't happened yet -- in the booth from 11 to 1 on Wednesday, June 6th. I'll also have other time doing something else in the Wiley booth -- my department head has let me know that, though not what or when -- probably the same day.

So my current plan is to be at the dumpy Javitz center just that one day, the 6th. (Wiley's in Hoboken, so schlepping over there is somewhat more cumbersome than it is from many other publishing houses.) If there's anyone out there that I should stop by and see (or vice versa), e-mail me, and we can set something up.

Or, conversely, if you want to avoid seeing me, the 6th is the day you need to be more careful, and in particular avoid the Wiley booth.


[1] Which seems to be substantially larger this year, if I'm reading the layout correctly. I have no idea why -- decisions like that are way above my pay grade -- but anything that emphasizes how powerful, stable, and utterly awesome we are is fine with me.

Update:

I will also be the official  Business Marketing Group person-on-duty in the Wiley booth on the 5th from 1-3 and on the 6th from 3-5, giving you three times the opportunities to find me, should you want to. Feel free to torment me by asking me questions about other marketers' books!

Note that this now means that I will be at the Javitz for a day and a half -- the afternoon of the 5th and all day on the 6th -- making it that much harder to avoid me.

Tor Dumps DRM

In what I believe is the first major-publisher fiction imprint to do so, Tor/Forge announced today (via a press release and a posting on Tor.com) that their entire publishing program will be available in electronic formats without Digital Rights Management schemes by early July of this year.

DRM had generally been considered necessary to prevent piracy, but examples in both directions -- the continued pirating of massive numbers of ostensibly "protected" books, without much obvious effect on actual sales, on one hand, and the example of mostly technology-books publishers, led by O'Reilly (and joined by, among others, several of the tech imprints of my own employer, Wiley) on the other -- had made that accepted wisdom more and more seem less acceptable, and less wise.

Tor and Forge are imprints of Tom Doherty Associates -- and Doherty's leadership in this area, and deep knowledge of how books are sold, isn't to be taken lightly -- but I suspect the more important point might be that TDA is itself part of the Macmillan publishing empire, and Macmillan has been the leader in several recent industry changes related to e-books, most importantly the move to agency pricing.

So good for Tor for taking this step, and good for Macmillan for allowing them to do so. With any luck, the rest of the world will notice in a few months that the sky hasn't fallen, and DRM will become an endangered species.

Barry Eisler Continues to Shill for Amazon

This time, it starts even before his first sentence proper, when he claims that "legacy publishers" -- he means specifically "the Big Six" US trade houses, but he's writing in The Guardian for a UK audience, and conveniently ignores many houses of similar or larger size (one of which is providing the computer on which I'm typing at this very moment).

I'm sorry, the stupid has infected me, and that sentence is a complete loss. I'll try again.

Eisler is sad that the mean ol' legacy publishers are trying to do things like "windowing" -- not publishing a work simultaneously in all formats and pricepoints, which most of us would simply call "publishing" -- and setting prices for their own goods. Eisler wishes, apparently, that they'd just stop doing that, and let nice Mr. Bezos handle all of the fiddly details -- his ideal world would not be a monopoly, but letting a bunch of publishers make their own decisions (even when those decisions go against the Will of Bezos) would be a monopoly.

It's clear that dear l'il Barry doesn't actually know what a "monopoly" is, or he wouldn't try to argue that six competitive companies embedded in a larger, and even more competitive, landscape qualify.

(There isn't much of his usual Lake Wobegone-esque "all self-publishers are creatively freed millionaires in control of their own destinies" bumf, but that undertone, of course, is the only reason anyone takes Eisler the least bit seriously at any time.)

Tell me, are his books this dull, poorly thought out and tedious? I have a dim view of the average level of writing in thrillers to begin with, but I'm afraid Eisler is driving that to new depths.

Because This Point Cannot Be Made Often Enough

Not to make other genres feel...inadequate, or anything.

(via an infographic-filled article at NYMag.com)

Night Shade's Massive 50% Off Sale

Night Shade, one of this nation's fine medium-size publishing houses, is having a big sale this week (the week in question is April 12-19), which you will want to check out.

How big, you ask? (Humor me -- I know you've read the post title already.)

Why, if you buy four books, you can get them at half price!

I'd particularly recommend Kage Baker's excellent collection Dark Mondays, Matthew Hughes's wonderfully entertaining Majestrum, the massive and indispensable Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber, Michael Swanwick's new novel Dancing With Bears, Walter Jon Williams's post-Singularity adventure Implied Spaces, and Martha Wells's series-beginning The Cloud Roads.

Your particular favorites may vary, of course: but this is a great sale, from a fine publisher with a deep and varied list, so go jump on it.

Kindle Fire Costs More to Produce Than Retail Price

With the caveat that this is one particular teardown analysis, and not necessarily utterly definitive, here's an analysis -- which I missed the first time around, last fall -- that makes the case that Amazon's shiny new $199 e-reader costs them $201.70 to build.

This does fit with my own thinking, so I tend to believe it, but it also fits with Amazon's actual behavior over the past fifteen years: they've always been willing to pay a lot to buy marketshare.

Note that, if this is true, Amazon not only sells Kindle devices at a loss but also demonstrably sells a lot of Kindle content at a loss.There are terms of art used to describe such things....

Yet Another Neat Thing My Forward-Looking Employer Has Wrought

If you've read Antick Musings much at all, you know that I'm fond of widgets. And who wouldn't be? They actually do stuff -- sometimes even useful stuff -- and they're called widgets.

So I was thrilled to see in my e-mail this morning that my employer, the mighty house of Wiley, has created a widget for linking to our books. "But, Andy," you might say, "other publishers have done this before, so it's no big deal."

Ah, but are those publishers global? I bet they aren't. Nearly everything Wiley publishes is available everywhere in the world, and so our landing page detects where a user is, and lists bookselling options local to that user. Can your other publishers say as much?

Anyway, the main point of these is to allow authors to post nice little snippets of code on their webpages to show off their books, but there's no reason that only authors can get into the act. If you're enamored of Applied Polymer Rheology, show your love!

For example, here's a book I've worked on, which I think is both deeply neat and underloved:


All you need to create a widget of your very own is a Wiley ISBN and this here website. Go on, it's fun!