Colleen talks about "reading the tea leaves" when a book hits the stores, and the tea leaves are looking soy-chai-licous for her newborn baby The Salt Maiden. Not only is the book getting glowing reviews, her sales ranks have been steadily ticking upward. We were coffee-talking Friday morning about whether or not it's healthy for writers to pay attention to those numbers, and obviously, anything that turns into an obsession is unhealthy, but Colleen and I agreed that there's no such thing as "too much information". Information is useful even when you don't like it. And when it is what you want it to be -- well, hot dog, then you're really in biz. Besides, let's face it, we all do it. (When I hear an author claim that they never read reviews or check their numbers, I'm reminded of Paula Poundstone's comment that "polls have shown that 93% of people masturbate and 7% lie.")
But I digress...
Publisher's Marketplace has several handy info-getters, including Book Tracker. Pop in the ISBN numbers you want to keep an eye on, and you can instantly pull up a list of books, organized by order of sales rank on Amazon, BN.com, plus any bestseller lists on which they are lucky enough to appear. Bonus feature: "mega-tracker" gives you a week-to-week progress report.
Handy little addition to the toolbox.
Comments
Thanks for the kind words!