{"id":631,"date":"2010-12-02T08:51:48","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T13:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=631"},"modified":"2010-12-02T13:45:33","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T18:45:33","slug":"q-hows-your-book-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/q-hows-your-book-doing\/","title":{"rendered":"Q. How’s Your Book Doing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A. Now and then I wonder that myself.\u00a0 I can always call up my editor and ask, but the sales numbers don\u2019t mean much to me since I have nothing to compare them to, so I end up calling my agent for an interpretation.\u00a0 He tells me not to worry, the numbers are \u201cstrong,\u201d and since I trust his expertise, I find this reassuring. Even so, I suspect I\u2019m not alone in wishing I had a better ball-park understanding of what goes on with young adult debuts, so I dug around for some basic data.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A. Bestseller YA Debut (NovelRank)<\/p><\/div>\n

We all know statistics can be misleading, especially when you have a small sampling of a large unknown pool, but why let that stop us?\u00a0 How a novel sells on Amazon.com<\/a> is, I\u2019ve heard, anywhere from 5-20% of the novel\u2019s total sales, so that information on its own is not very useful.\u00a0 NovelRank.com<\/a>, a free, public site, takes the frequently updated \u201cAmazon Bestsellers Rank\u201d data from Amazon.com and charts it in long-term graphs.\u00a0 Now it starts getting kind of fun.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a graph (A) of a debut young adult novel that was a bestseller the first week it was released, at the end of August.\u00a0 It\u2019s been selling well over 200 copies a month on Amazon for the last four months, and it pre-sold a lot before it was even released.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be deceived about the December drop-off: we\u2019re only two days into the month.<\/p>\n

\"\"

B. More Typical YA Debut? (NovelRank)<\/p><\/div>\n

Then there\u2019s a graph (B) of a different debut young adult novel that came out in March, like mine.\u00a0 It sold well over 100 copies on Amazon at its peak and is still selling, but closer to 30 per month.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen half a dozen similar graphs for debut YA novels\u2014a tiny sampling\u2014just enough for me to not get bored and to guess this is a more typical curve.\u00a0 Please remember, I\u2019m totally not an expert on this.<\/p>\n

Finally, here\u2019s a graph (C) for Birthmarked<\/em>, also a debut young adult novel, which was released the last day in March.\u00a0 NovelRank started following it April 2, when I first discovered the site and entered the title for tracking.\u00a0 Its highest bump shows just over 100 books sold on Amazon in May.\u00a0 It had a drop in August, picked up again in September when school started, and has been fairly steady in the 70\u2019s since.<\/p>\n

\"\"

C. Birthmarked (NovelRank)<\/p><\/div>\n

I already knew my book was no bestseller, but it also looks like it\u2019s doing as well or better than debuts usually do, at least on Amazon.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s early yet to know how it might do long term, but \u201cstrong\u201d for now seems pretty good to me.<\/p>\n

By now you\u2019re probably wondering why I don\u2019t just consult my royalty statement. I will, when I get one.\u00a0 Then I\u2019ll probably have to dig up some basics so I\u2019ll have something to compare it to.<\/p>\n

As always, feel free to comment.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure there are people out there who know more about this than I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A. Now and then I wonder that myself.\u00a0 I can always call up my editor and ask, but the sales numbers don\u2019t mean much to me since I have nothing to compare them to, so I end up calling my agent for an interpretation.\u00a0 He tells me not to worry, the numbers are \u201cstrong,\u201d and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","tag-birthmarked-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}