|
I have no idea why publishers are so secretive. After all,
the truth will out by way of the twice-yearly Royalty Statement that states
each print run, analyses sales and tells you how much you are being paid in
the minutest detail. However, this statement is what economists like to
call a lagging statistic – the writer will not see the data, or the money,
for a book sold in July until March of the following year.
So, who can tell you, the well shaded author, what is going
on out there in book land in the interim? Step forward, Jeff Bezos. Amazon,
once loathed by publishers and writers, is not just the Covid lifeline but
the source of instant sales data for every author for every book ever published
that is on sale via Amazon. That is something like 8 million publications
by the way, so pretty well anything that has ever had a spine and cover in
the history of man.
If you are wondering where this data might be found having
never seen it you are considerably lucky. Only us poor writing saps
obsessively observe the smallest movements up and down the charts which I’d
estimate are updated every 6 hours or so. Of course, you don’t just have
the global chart. You have three charts picked out for your particular
niche by the Amazon algorithm. These are great for the ego as you have the
potential for a orange No.1 Best Seller badge though sometimes the award is
baffling. As I write this I am considerably annoyed that I have been denied
another No.1 badge for Frankel in the Horse/Jockey Biographies
section due to the inclusion of Rugby’s Greatest Matches and Golf’s
Strangest Rounds respectively at number one and two. Great books I am
sure, but anything to do with horses? Nah.
And when you’ve finished reading the sales runes and charts
courtesy of Jeff there are always the reviews over which to agonise. Now,
these are more important than just ego. Good reviews are like crack cocaine
to the Amazon recommendation algorithm; the higher your review rating the
higher it shoves your book up the ‘you might like to buy’ totem. The
ratings run from 1-star to 5-stars. Books with a perfect five are
essentially impossible, books solely reviewed by the author’s Mum, agent
and best friend. As with all things Amazon the calculation of your
overall star rating is opaque; it is far from a simple average. I confess
to not being completely obsessive so I haven’t read all 52 reviews for Frankel
which is, for the most part, hovering between an impressive (though I say
it myself) 4.8/4.9 out of 5. However, one day in November the rating
plunged to somewhere around 3 as a single 1-star review was posted. A nasty
dent to the aforementioned ego so I braced myself to read the algorithm
sapping four-word review.
‘These lights don’t work’, it said. Err? What? I was full of
injustice. Now Amazon is famous for its Kremlin like impenetrability when
it comes to righting wrongs. There is clearly nobody to call. No obvious
way for me to remove the review. So, I did what any slighted author would
do: I dialled into Mr Google who took me to the review appeal section on
some obscure outpost of Amazon. Actually, once you got there it was all
very simple until the question as to why I was complaining about the
review. None of the tick boxes offered ticked the box so eventually, more
in frustration than hope, I ticked abusive. Well, I rationalised, I
felt abused, if only a little. I resigned myself to life as a 3-star
author.
But all hail what was almost certainly another Bezos
algorithm, as within 24 hours the 1-star review had vanished. Frankly I was
dumbfounded. I really never expected it to disappear. But it had and I was
back to 4.9. Rejoice, as a certain woman once said. Victory is sweet, so
now emboldened I’m pondering on whether to appeal the 3-star review that
complained that the book was delivered by Whistl instead of Royal Mail. Or
maybe I should just relax.
|
