Reporting

It’s interesting to me that I can’t yet see how many copies of First have been sold. Or maybe I just don’t know how to see it. There are three things I’ve been able to find out thus far: 1) The company that published my book reports on eBook sales weekly, apparently. That must be the frequency they get their reporting from Amazon and other partners; 2) on Amazon I see graphs showing trends, which are the separate rankings of the paperback and eBooks against all other books. It’s interesting but doesn’t actually say how many copies you sold. and 3) on the Amazon pages, again separate for the two versions, I can see the category ranking, which is how your book fares against others in the same genre.

All pieces of the puzzle that provide very little actual information. I understand it takes longer to report back to the publisher on paperback copies, although in this connected world you’d think data flow would be much faster. The rankings are interesting from a comparative standpoint but it seems they’re a nice way to distract you without telling you anything concrete.