Amazon Author Central Features

Amazon have improved their Author Central site where book authors can get some some data about sales sold through Amazon. Since I have only one book, An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis, I don't have much to look at. But I thought I'd share two pieces of information available: Total Sales, and Sales by Geography.

The information is for the United States only. First below is a chart of weekly book sales going back to February  2011 (about a year after the book was published  by The Liffey Press) - a very modest 57 books in total have been sold during this time.

Next is Sales by region. The numbers are small, but New York comes out on top with 10, Chicago next on 5, and Phoenix on 4. The map that the screen grab below is taken from is an interactive one - you can scroll over each state (on Amazon.com only) and see how many books you have sold in each one. I bet J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown have great fun with this!

All this is part of a greater trend to provide information for authors to improve their own sales and perhaps target new markets. I'm sure that it will also help advertisers to target ads better. I like seeing tools like this as I can check for myself how my book is doing rather than relying on other courses. The book sells for $30 on Amazon.com, this means that it has made $1,521 through Amazon. I have not yet received any royalties - must check that one up!

Amazon Recommends My Own Book To Me

Today I received an email from Amazon in which it recommended my own book An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis to me!

I was pleased that it is being recommended - probably because I was looking up other Business Analysis books. And I hope that it is being recommended to other Amazon users too. However, I did think it odd that I would be recommended my own book - after all, I do have an Amazon Author's Page which lists my book. 

Thanks Amazon, but I have a copy already.

The Top 10 Most Read Books in the World - How many have you read?

Having read and reviewed a few books lately I was interested to see which, if any, of the top 10 most read books of the last 50 years I had read myself. Jared Fanning has produced an infographic "based on number of books printed and sold over the last 50 years".

Of these top 10, I have read just two - The Da Vinci Code and Gone with the Wind. I have seen one Harry Potter movie, the LOTR series, and the Diary of Anne Frank movie, but not read the books. I have read small pieces of the bible. Of the top 10, I had never heard of The Alchemist or Think and Grow Rich before. 

So - 2 out of 10 is my figure, what's yours?

My Author Page on Amazon

Today I discovered that book authors can set up their own Profile Pages on Amazon - so I did.

My (only) book - An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis, now has a Visit Amazon's Eugene O'Loughlin Page link to which I've added my photo, a short Bio, and my Twitter (@eoloughlin) feed. 

Interesting that Amazon allows this - of course I had to log on and authenticate that I am the author. This is a good idea in my view as it gives more information to potential buyers about book authors. Personalization of the web takes another step forward!