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Posts Tagged ‘nielsen’

Authors in the Driver’s Seat: Nielsen for Authors

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

I just got an email earlier today from an author talking about a huge jump in her Amazon ranking. This is a common scenario, and always a cause for celebration. However, I cautioned her that a major spike in Amazon sales rank (from, say, 1,000,000 to 100,000) does not necessarily indicate huge numbers of books sold. I understand this can be hard for an author to hear, and also hard to believe–such a big change in numbers must mean something! But the relative ranking system means that to go from #100 to #1,  you need to sell a LOT of books, but to go from 1,000,000 to 100,000, the sales don’t have to be that extreme.

I love it when my authors are involved in the marketing and sales process. What sells books is not Beaufort putting them out there, but our fantastic authors tirelessly introducing their books to people at speaking engagements, on their blogs, on television, even on the subway. Having an enthusiastic and involved author makes my job easier and more rewarding. I’ve tried to provide feedback to authors about sales, but I have dozens of authors, and they don’t stop being interested in their books when I take on new books.  It’s overwhelming to try to keep everyone posted about what their book is doing more frequently than they get royalty statements. So most authors turn to the most responsive real-time reflection of sales that they have access to–Amazon’s sales rankings. (I admit that I do it, too, when I’m trying to see immediately how effective an author’s appearance on a particular show was.)

Which is why I’m so thrilled that Amazon is going to start providing authors access to Nielsen sales figures through the Author Central program.

The LA Times goes into detail here.

I’d encourage every author to go sign up for Author Central. It enables you to fill in your author profile on Amazon, link your blog to your books, etc. And now, it’ll give you access (for free!) to the same tools publishers have to gauge sales. Every week, authors will be able to see their updated Nielsen sales figures. Those don’t represent all sales (special sales, library sales, the author’s own sales at events, and some other channels are not reflected in Nielsen’s numbers), but it’s a much more useful way to gauge success than Amazon’s sales ranking.

I think this is a great step forward, and will give authors more tools to help sell and promote their books. Kudos, Amazon.

Margot

Beau and Arrow – Nielsen

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

If you don’t know who Nielsen is they’re basically the people who know everything. They know exactly how many people bought the first Harry Potter (a shmillion), how many people tuned in to watch Peyton Manning lose the Super Bowl (many millions), and how many people bought Heidi Montag’s solo album (like, 5, including her husband). They’re basically media statistic gods. I heard that they used to have a random selection of American households who they gave a clicker to, and members of the home would click in every time they watched TV. However they do it, they know their stuff. At least, I thought they did until now. Somehow, the intern e-mail address over here at Beaufort is on their mailing list, and they sent us a very interesting update to whoever cares about random media statistics. I will share an excerpt:
“Each week the typical American consumes almost 35 hrs of TV, 2 hrs of timeshifting, 4 hrs of internet, 22 minutes of online video and 4 minutes of mobile video.  Cross-media usage also continues to increase – now 59% of Americans use TV and the Internet simultaneously at least one time per month, spending 3.5 hours each month on TV and the Internet at the same time.”
I have things to say about this. First and foremost, I am not a typical American (woo hoo!). The great majority of TV that I watch is “timeshifted” (which sounds like a term from a sci-fi movie…then again, Tivo sometimes feels a bit Star Trekky). Like I mentioned many weeks back, my father is a tech-guru and felt it was our responsibility to make sure Tivo was a necessity in all homes. It passed with flying colors, but left an indellible mark on my family members – that being, for the past 10 years our patience with commericals has been nil. From my own made-up-on-the-spot statistical data, similar commercial-hating has been reported by 89% of DVR users.
Second and secondmost, 4 hours of internet sounds entirely too little. I just spent all day on the internet. Nielsen needs to have a little chat with a little company called Google. (Which, whoa! big news! was for the first time ever surpassed by another website in the number of people tuning in a month. That website? Facebook. Thank you to a very upset friend of mine for supplying this sad statistic).
Third and thirdmost, it’s about time people start multitasking more. If we can’t check our Weather Channel app while watching Lost, then we just aren’t 21st century kind of people.
Fourth and fourthmost, on a completely unrelated topic, I have added to my celeb-connection list. I was at a copy center yesterday, and a guy came in and started chewing my ear off, asking 21 questions about my life, my future and other demographic information you don’t usually share with strangers. Anyway, he said his father wrote the lyrics to Barry Manilow’s Mandy. I never had particularly positive feelings towards Barry Manilow until I watched him in an interview and he said he used to make up commercial jingles. Ready?! “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is thereeee” – Barry Manilow! And the ultimate commercial jingle of all time, “I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, cause Band-Aids stuck on me!” – Barry Manilow!!! Just that much closer to being famous…
Yours truly,

Rachel Lily