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Tools for Tracking Book Sales

March 21st, 2013 by

As part of the business side of publishing, one of the many things self-published authors have to keep track of is their book sales.

Tracking book sales is easy if you just have one book and are just publishing it through one distribution channel, ie Amazon. It can get quite cumbersome if you’re trying track your book sales through multiple distribution channels. We’ve compiled a list of tools for you to make tracking sales easy.

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Tools:
1. TrackerBox 

trackerbox

-Tool for indie authors by indie authors

-Imports all your sales from various various and lets you track sales trends on each channel.

-Price: $60

– Susan Kaye Quinn goes over the program here.

 

2. Amazon Author Central program for book tracking and more.

-Let’s you pull in from various retailers

-Data pulls in from Neilson BookScan

 

3. Indie Sales Tracking

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-Let’s you upload all your sales spreadsheets and gives you reports based on the data

-Cost $49.50

Some additional tips for tracking your book sales.

  • Be CONSISTENT, decide when you are going to track your sales and stick to it. Don’t put it off!
  • Don’t try to track EVERYTHING. Keeping track of print sales and ebook sales on each platform alone is a lot of data. Don’t go crazy trying to also keep track of sales ranks and other markers, use those only as a gauge to see how well your current promotion is doing.
  • Remember to compare trends in your sales with your marketing efforts. Did you run a sale? How did your numbers change? As Laurie Lewis put it “By tracking your sales, you see whether your promotion efforts are working and how to channel them for best results.”
  • Back up your work! Just as you back up (or triple back up) your writing, do the same for your sales tracking information. As a self-published author you are responsible for maintaining your business and that includes preparing for technology failure.

Other useful articles:
Tracking Sales by Susan Kaye Quinn
How to Track Your Book Sales in Real Time with Amazon by Laurie Lewis
All About Amazon Author Central
Amazon’s Author Central: Keeping Track of Your Books by Darcy Pattison

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Kate Tilton is the marketing associate for BiblioCrunch, an author assistant, and a book blogger.
Kate is also a proud host of #indiechat, Tuesdays at 9pm EST.

You can connect with her on her website, Twitter, or BiblioCrunch.

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