lovedThat said, here are the best ways to get a copy of Discount Armageddon while also helping my week one sales:
1. Do not buy the book until March 6th. If you see a copy on a shelf somewhere early, don't pick it up. Wait until the actual release date, because that's when sales will start to count against my first week. Anything before then will count toward my overall sales, but will vanish into the ether when it comes to calculating best seller lists. I know, it's weird.
2. Buy brick and mortar. If you possibly can, walk into a bookstore and take a copy off the shelf. Not sure your local store is going to carry it? Now would be the time to contact them and remind them that you'll be wanting to buy, since this way, they have time to place an order (they won't if you come in the day before release). There are a lot of reasons for this, but the two big ones are a) if they sell, they re-order, and that's good for me, and b) most brick and mortar stores report to the NYT list. And I'd love to get onto the list again.
3. If you need to order on the internet, consider Borderlands Books (physical only). Borderlands is my local store; they take international orders, as well as orders within the United States; I will be dropping by on release day to sign books for them, so you can not only get a copy of your very own, you can get it signed. That doubles the awesome factor, and makes up for needing to wait for the postal mail to reach you, right? Plus, well. My book events are big and chaotic, so I like driving business their way. Again, sooner is better than later, as they're going to be hosting my book release party, and need to know how many copies to get.
4. All eBooks are created equal. Sadly, right now, electronic and internet sales don't count against the NYT list, which is why this comes in so far down that list. That said, a sale is a sale, and my royalty rate is the same for all electronic editions, everywhere. So buy from whatever retailer best suits you, in whatever format best suits you.
5. Buy the book. This is the most important thing. My sales, especially in the first week, will tell my publisher what kind of a market they're looking at for the adventures of Verity and company. So please, if you can, buy the book. I want to stay in this world for a long, long time to come.
Thank you.
February 7 2012, 02:04:56 UTC 5 years ago
February 7 2012, 03:32:36 UTC 5 years ago
It’s also no longer true; it was, but the NYT now counts ebook sales. Ebook sales do count toward the NYT combined list. They have separate categories for ebooks & print books, but they now lead with the “combined” list. Ebook sales count; they are not yet weighted by seller. (Weighted means: NYT samples data from a selection of general interest brick and mortar stores, and they assign the numbers received a “weight” per store/venue. So 100 copies from one store is not equivalent, for determining list positioning, as 100 copies from a different store).
Courtney Milan hit the NYT top 10 combined list by sales of her ebook-only novella. Until she self-published that ebook, she was off the top ten radar, but the novella was in the top 10 at amazon for weeks. As in, top 10 numerically of all books sold, not just romance.
So going forward, ebook sales do count in some fashion toward the NYT sales list.
February 7 2012, 03:53:44 UTC 5 years ago
February 7 2012, 04:06:09 UTC 5 years ago
You’re very welcome :).
Ebook sales, at one point, did not count toward the NYT list. I’ve seen some people assume that when authors say “ebook sales don’t count”, they’re deliberately trying to tank ebook sales, and I know Seanan is not trying to do that. I don’t think any of the authors are, fwiw - they’re relaying information that was entirely true, but has since changed.
We were told ebook sales didn’t count, and when we were told this, it was true. So sales “lost” to first week ebooks had a disproportionate affect on the genres for which ebook adopters are higher. (Romance would be the most heavily affected). Since the placement on the NYT list is relative, not absolute - i.e. you can be #1 selling 800k copies or #1 selling 200k copies - it depends entirely on the rest of the field’s popularity--it did make a difference.
But at this point, now that they’ve begun to merge them into a combined list, I don’t think it does, and Courtney Milan’s placement on the combined list certainly caught attention off of it.
February 7 2012, 16:24:34 UTC 5 years ago
Do Amazon physical sales count yet, or are they still a non-reporting market? If they don't report physical, do they report virtual, or are we only looking at non-Amazon electronic sales?