First of all, I would say that hubby keeps an eye on all my finances and sales.
He has spreadsheets that analyse everything to the nth degree, probably going back maybe 4 years now. He can tell me the spread of sales for a book, and what market that book sells in strongest.
From this I know that Amazon has accounted for 69% of my income in the first year to settling down to 67% last year.
Amazon accounts for 67% of my sales income, with the other 33% coming from ARe, B&N, etc etc.
Hubby's work on getting all the information has informed us deciding on which books to translate, putting Texas to audio, etc.
It also feeds into our accounts with all the various currencies. Yep, he's a clever guy!
But, sometimes as an author you want something quick and dirty and Book Report is where it's at for me. I owe Jay Northcote for putting me onto this.
I have been using this for nearly a year now, and this is a snapshot of how the land lies for me JUST in Amazon.
Book Report is a sales analysis tool for
Amazon only. It works by tracking Amazon sales within KDP itself and can give you daily sales information to help build a picture of what books are selling best for you as an author.
You can only track your self published sales (or a publisher can track their author sales) - in that you can only track books you have personally published.
Observations on the data:
In that nearly-a-year space of time, my best selling books are the six above. The Montana Series, Kyle (Legacy #1), and Kissing Alex & Loves Design (Bodyguards Inc 5 and 6). This is by INCOME, not individual unit sales.
Crooked Tree Ranch had originally been with Totally Bound, so I was pleased to see it still charted well when books 2 and 3 came out.
This analysis is on an income basis. My menage 'Three' would be just above Love's Design as an example if it was based on unit sales, but as 'Three' was only 99c it made way less in monetary terms.
End Street holds positions 7 and 8, with Texas right thereafter. Boy Banned, being cheaper, and with lesser sales than Montana, is down in 18th place, and Accidental Hero is also just below the top 6.
I only have the last year's data, so this analysis strongly features my most recent books (new books = sales). What is telling is that the Texas books still poke in just under the top six and they've been out some time, so that is good news (yay Texas!).
Obviously, I have no access to some of my Ellery Mountain books (TB), Rainy Afternoon (DSP), Vampire Contract and others (Extasy), Alpha Delta and Stanford Creek (ARe), and Seth and Casey (MLR).
Kyle is only 1500 unit sales behind Cowboys Home... will it catch up? Who knows!
Here is the top 20 best selling books on Amazon (all territories added together) for me for the last 11 months in total...
1 - The Rancher's Son
2 - Crooked Tree Ranch
3 - A Cowboy's Home
4 - Kyle
5 - Kissing Alex
6 - Love's Design
7 - End Street Volume 1
8 - End Street Volume 2
9 - The Heart Of Texas
10 - Accidental Hero
11 - The Case of the Purple Pearl
12 - Texas Wedding
13 - Undercover Lovers
14 - Bodyguard to a Sex God
15 - The Ex Factor
16 - Texas Fall
17 - Texas Winter
18 - Boy Banned
19 - Max and the Prince
20 - Texas Heat
The helpful pie chart that doesn't come with labels unless you hover. Rancher's Son is lilac, Crooked Tree Ranch is dark green, to give you an idea!
How do I use this data?
In a raw way I can see whether a book is selling or not, how a particular price point might change sales, and largely what subgenre of my writing readers like to buy.
There are the usual suspects, Montana, Texas, Sanctuary, Bodyguards, End Street. Apart from BoyBanned that fills the entire top 20!
I really wish I had the data going back the entire 6 years I've been writing.
If you want to try the system you can find more details here:
https://www.getbookreport.com/
What tools do you use to inform the decisions you make on the direction of your writing?
