Authors, Discover a Little-Known Method for Tracking Your Book's Sales

Any author with a newly-released book will tell you how frustrating it is not to know exactly how well that book is selling (or if it's selling period). Many times (unless you are on the national best-seller list-which is extremely unlikely), an author knows nothing about the book's activity for several months; that is until his/her royalty check arrives or his/her sales are posted online by the publishing company.

Many authors attempt to partially track their sales through online sites such as Amazon.com. On each book's sales page, there is a section entitled 'Amazon.com Sales Rank'. While this can be a good method for checking to see if your book has sold a copy or two-it is often times misleading, vague, and unreliable. It can give you false hope that your book is doing wonderfully when you've recently sold only a single copy causing your sales rank to jump deceptively; or it can crush your spirits if you know you've sold quite a few books, but discover your book's sales rank is behind 1,503,210 other books (including those that are out-of-print).

Some online sites post artificial comments such as, "Customers who bought this book also purchased...,"-leading the author to believe that their book has actually sold well, being compared to such well-known authors.

Internet-savvy authors may create their own websites and include tracking counters. Through page visits, referrers, keywords, and guestbook comments, they can see how much interest their book(s) are generating (provided there is any kind of interest at all). Though, website interest doesn't guarantee book sales.

Alas, many authors can rely only on first-hand reports from customers (including friends and family) or libraries who have bought the book.

For marketing purposes, it seems unfair that authors cannot be given more 'real-time', up-to-date stats on their books' sales. Yet, the extra staff and time it would take to keep these kinds of records would surely raise book prices and lower author royalties. As well, publishing companies may shy away from over-zealous authors who insist their royalty checks don't match their tracked sales figures.

Until a more updated form of tracking sales is available, there is one method that can give an author his or her tracking fix...Ingram's automated tracking system.

Ingram is a major wholesale book supplier to most bookstores, libraries, and online sites. Anytime a book is ordered from someone other than the actual publisher/printer, it goes through Ingram's system. Yet, many authors do not realize that this distributor has an easy tracking method. Not only can you track your own books, you may also enter other authors' books to give a comparison of how well your particular book is selling.

In order to be listed in Ingram's system, your publishing company (or you as the author) must register it with Ingram and the book must have an ISBN code. If you are self-published and your printer/publisher has not informed you of being registered with Ingram, chances are, your book is probably not in their system. However, most major publishers do register their books with this company, as it is the only way to make their books available to national chain bookstores.

While this is a little-known tracking method, I suggest that authors using the phone-in system do not abuse it by calling too often. I would hate to see this tool be unavailable to authors due to over-use. My suggestion would be to control the urge to obsess over your sales and only call once a week for an update. While tracking other authors' book sales (please remember no personal information about the customers is given through this system), Ingram will only allow five entries per call.

It is important to note that not all of your book sales may come through Ingram. It should also be known that the possibility of books being returned may later change the amount of sales that were originally reported. With that being said, it's time to learn how to use Ingram's automated system:

1. Call 1-800-937-8000.

2. Choose #4 in the initial menu (which is the option to let you dial an extension).

3. Dial Ext. #36803.

4. When prompted, input the book's entire ISBN code (usually found on the barcode on the back cover, inside dustcover, or listed in the first few title pages). When the number is read back to you, press 1 to confirm it is correct.

5. You have the option to check stock information only by pressing 1, check sales demand by pressing 2, or both at once by pressing 3. Ingram can give you the sales/stock information for the last week, this year, and last year.

Now you have an easy and immediate way to keep a relatively decent record of your book's activity. Use it wisely!