PaulJapan
Sep 3, 2008, 08:10 PM
I was hoping that some people could help me out with information on publishing sales data. I'm with an SME publisher in Japan and we're looking into buying translation rights for American books to sell here. First I'll share what I know:
-Amazon/Barnes & Noble sales rankings favour recent sales to the point of being useless. This emphasis on recent sales means a publication can sell a few copies in a few hours and outrank the New York times bestseller by a few hundred places.
-Ingram sales data is an awesome service and a very highly commendable undertaking by the distributor. However their market shares varies widely from publication to publication making estimates based on Ingram sales very hit and miss. I checked with a publication for which we knew the exact sales figure and instead of Ingram having the typical estimated market share of one sixth they were close to one 23rd.
(for those who don't know the Ingram company releases their book sales data via an automated telephone service for free. Call 615-213-6803 and follow the prompts with ISBN at the ready. They are typically considered to have a one sixth market share but this is unreliable)
-Nielson Bookscan is prohibitively expensive and no one seems to use it anyway.
My question is whether there are other methods to estimate sales? Amazon/B&N won't get me sales data, Ingram is unreliable and NB is out of the question. Are there any rules of thumb, such as "making it to the new york times non-fiction hardcover bestseller list top ten implies X sales minimum?" etc? Anything at all?
I'm really stuck here and would really appreciate any information I could get.
-Amazon/Barnes & Noble sales rankings favour recent sales to the point of being useless. This emphasis on recent sales means a publication can sell a few copies in a few hours and outrank the New York times bestseller by a few hundred places.
-Ingram sales data is an awesome service and a very highly commendable undertaking by the distributor. However their market shares varies widely from publication to publication making estimates based on Ingram sales very hit and miss. I checked with a publication for which we knew the exact sales figure and instead of Ingram having the typical estimated market share of one sixth they were close to one 23rd.
(for those who don't know the Ingram company releases their book sales data via an automated telephone service for free. Call 615-213-6803 and follow the prompts with ISBN at the ready. They are typically considered to have a one sixth market share but this is unreliable)
-Nielson Bookscan is prohibitively expensive and no one seems to use it anyway.
My question is whether there are other methods to estimate sales? Amazon/B&N won't get me sales data, Ingram is unreliable and NB is out of the question. Are there any rules of thumb, such as "making it to the new york times non-fiction hardcover bestseller list top ten implies X sales minimum?" etc? Anything at all?
I'm really stuck here and would really appreciate any information I could get.