Busy day, so this is gonna be quick.
Agent Andrew Zack blogged the other day about Bookscan, a service to track and report book sales: The Lie that is Bookscan.
My own agent, Joshua Bilmes, has posted his own thoughts, disagreeing with Zack’s assessment: A Bookscanner Darkly
Personally, I tend to agree with Joshua, and not just because he sells my books. As far as I know, most writers, publishers, and agents know perfectly well that Bookscan represents a percentage of total sales, and that percentage could be anywhere from 70-80% for one author but under 50% for another. Bookscan seems to capture a lower fraction of mine, since I do better with independents.
I don’t think Bookscan ever claimed to report ALL sales. It’s more data than anything else I’ve seen, save from the publisher itself, but it’s definitely not 100% of my sales.
A publisher using Bookscan as the sole criterion for rejecting an author (as described in Zack’s post) is troubling, but I see that as a problem with the publisher, not with Bookscan.
(I do still track and graph my Bookscan numbers every week to fulfil my neurotic validation needs, of course. They don’t tell me actual sales, but they do help me see trends.)
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
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Comments
It's theoretically possible to get some sort of group membership access deal, but I only know of one case where it's been done, and even then it's over $100 per year for the members.
Agreed that the problem is really publishers using Bookscan figures for anything more than a ballpark or like how Joshua does it. It does sound like the guy was grasping at Bookscan to avoid giving out whatever his real reason was -- even if it's just "I don't like it/don't want to work on it".
How common is it to be distributing the royalty statements?
How common is it for an agent to send an author's royalty statement to a potential buyer as proof of sales?
Another thing I'm not seeing most people mention is how the percentage of Bookscan to actual total changes over time. I usually see a lower percentage for Bookscan in the first month after release (about 50%) slowly building to a higher percentage as the books age (about 70% in the slow season.) We usually use the 60% formula at my home to ballpark the totals but we're not always right. Until the recent release of the mass market editions, the number was edging to 75% on the first two titles, but it was only 40% of the third title since that one was off shelves in the major chains, but was selling steadily in the indies. But there are spikes for all the books whenever a new one comes out or a new edition. Over time, Bookscan has told me a lot, but in isolation or short bursts, it's almost useless, unless you have regional breakdowns for specific events.
Bookscan definitely seems to give more useful data over the long term. I've been graphing the numbers, and it gives a very clear picture of new books doing better than the old, which is a good thing :-)
It does give me a comparison about how well the current book is doing compared to previous ones, though. So I know each book has done better than the prior, which is what we want. It also let me see that my own promo activites don't tend to have a visible impact on sales, but the release of a new book does move copies of the older ones.
That's my choice, though. One size definitely does not fit all ;-)
I see it as a convenient excuse not to pick up a book they don't want.
-->No, they do all right capturing the data from independents. They are missing the non-book-store sales, where your books (being mass market originals) are going.
Which is to say, you are likely in the prime Bookscan-screw group. How do Bookscan's numbers compare to the numbers on your royalty statements?