How am I doing on Amazon?

Most people go into Amazon to buy books: easy shopping, and it would an entirely admirable enterprise, if it wasn’t systematically killing all our local bookshops. Authors, though, sneakily visit Amazon to check how their books are selling, to plot their progress up (and down) the Amazon sales rankings – the bit that says “#47,543 in books”.

Actually there are some odd things about this calculation. I was rejoicing the other day that my new book on the Roman Triumph (soon to appear in the UK)  had reached #2 in the Amazon.com (that’s the US site) rankings … but in the niche sub-category of “General Geometry”. (Quite how it got classified as “geometry” beats me, but I guess it felt nice even so.)

But what every author wants to know is how many sales does it take to get you zooming up the Amazon ranks. I’ve always suspected that we were dealing with single figures here. But proof came the other day when the husband decided to buy 4 copies of his own book on Icons, which seemed almost as cheap, and a lot easier to obtain, from Amazon than from the publishers. The result was that he zoomed more than 250,000 places up the rankings.

Then there are those innocent customer reviews. Are they all written by real punters, or by the authors paid up friends or enemies? Is it like those suspiciously frank hotel reviews on TripAdvisor (“Quite the best hotel in Beachville and far better than the awful Hotel Sunny next door”)?

Just occasionally the reviewer confesses his or her bias (“Happy declaration . . . I live with the author”). But mostly we are left to guess whether these usually pseudonymous critics are the author’s best friend, lovers or publishers or not. Frankly I suspect (though couldn’t possibly prove) that big publishers have a small team of Amazon reviewers, enthusing over their new books under the banner of “Jeremy in Cambridge”.

Yet there is a certain style to some internet book sites. I was especially tickled by a request from Marshal Zeringue to contribute to his “Page 99” test. Taking his cue from Ford Madox Ford’s quote: "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you", Meringue asks his authors to explain why their page 99 does exactly that.

Of course, it’s a clever idea. By page 99, all the flashy stuff of the introduction is well left behind, and the author is not yet limbering up to his/her climactic finale.If there is ever a place where the author has got bogged down, it's almost certainly page 99. My first reaction on applying the test was general gloom: page 99 was about the most un-typically intricate page of argument in the whole book (I even thought of swapping to page 69, which is the test that Meringue sets his other, mostly fiction, authors).

But thanks to Meringue I came to find that I had a soft spot, after all, for page 99.  One thing I had vowed NOT to do in my Triumph book was to pull the wool over the eyes of the general reader. If we couldn’t actually answer some basic questions about the ceremony, I was going to be straight and in plain language explain why.

And actually that means sharing some of the most interesting and appealing things about doing ancient history. My pledge was not to be in the business of peddling half truths, but of letting people into the marvelous game of exploring what we can, and cannot, know about the Roman world (uggh -- sorry, sounds a bit PR).

And on page 99, that’s what’s going on.

Comments

[Hill]

I have reviewed a total of about ten books on Amazon, all favorably. I did know two of the authors, and I did cop to it in my reviews. So at least some Amazon reviews are for real. Cheers!

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska, I would never have thought that you would go for pornography. Especially since you found the following erotic:
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/lovers_painting.jpg
Concerning Yugoslav chess books: these were definitely the best in the 1980s. They had developed a symbolic langauge (sort of like Esparanto for geeks and dorks) which allowed anyone to read the games in a snap. The opening books had all the major lines analyzed 25 moves deep, with all the mistakes to avoid. I spent entire decade of the 1980s studying chess for 2 or 3 hours a night, then trying to beat a series of chess computers. After a time, I could beat the most difficult ones with a fair regularity. This was in contradistinction to the Russian chess magazine "Shakmatny Bulletin". I would sit with a pile of Russian/English dictionaries, translating as best I could. It seemed like fun at the time. After a decade of that, I went back to grad school. So, for what it is worth: I have that going for me.
I must say, you threw me with "periegetic exegesis". I couldn't find it in any dictionary. I have a giant English dictionary, but I have misplaced it. I did find a lot of other things I had lost while looking for the dictionary last night. I finally discovered periegetic means "travelling description" or "travelling literature", though I was tempted at just "description":
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Periegetes#
While looking, I did run across this which talks at great length about "petrification", which, as I learned, was the practice of building in wood, then repeating in stone. But in the end, it was a lot of writing, without any concluson. There are a lot of nice pictures of Greek tripods, and a Greek tomb.
http://www.ajaonline.org/pdfs/106.3/AJA1063.pdf
Still, we have no clue as to where periegetic exegesis may be leading you. I will post the best Italian/American recipes later. I have something I have to do today.

[SW Foska]

No, Tony, it was a sober work of periegetic exegesis I was after. Porn is too expensive, unless JS with his wealthy consort is prepared to lend me some money.
Your cookbook sounds like a better gain than your yugoslav chess losses, although the latter, if ever found, might serve a cultural historian of the cold war.

[Xjy]

Re publishers, I think "catatonically stupid" is perhaps an impression rather than an analysis. Perhaps they just appear stupid on the job because they're such congenital and incorrigible liars, and have no imagination.

I'm sure "greed" fits in the picture somewhere, too, but I'm not sure exactly where...

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska, I must ask if you are ordering Italian erotica akin to the drawing "nolo cum Myrtale" which proved to be so shocking a few posts ago?
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/lovers_painting.jpg
This incident made me recall that I had ordered a few hundred dollars worth of chess books from Yugoslavia in 1991. Shortly after that, the UN imposed an arms embargo against Yugoslavia. Apparently, chess books were considered arms to be embargoed, for I am still waiting for them to arrive.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/peace/docs/scres713.html
Thanks for jogging my memory. Chess Champion Bobby Fischer went farther than I did. He participated in a "World Championship" in Yugoslavia. Because of his defiance, he became an international criminal. I think he may have become a bit unbalanced.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_fischer

[ResoluteReader]

Well, I'm sure that when the twin evils that plague my book reviewing are solved (lack of money for new books and a staggeringly large pile of unread books by the desk) I'll be glad to review it on ResoluteReader..... I wonder if my reviews of your earlier books helped with the sales ranking at all?

[SW Foska]

thank you for your kind suggestions and promises of suggestions. As of today I can also speak well of www.deanet.it whom I had written off as brigands but who have now delivered the goods (UK postal strike almost certainly to blame for the delay). Moreover, many italian publishers take orders direct by phone or email and actually despatch them, not being afflicted with the disorder harshly (but alas by and large correctly) diagnosed by Alcock for the anglophone trade.

[Eileen]

dear Foska---www.internetbookshop.it

I believe they ship anywhere;
greetings from the heart of the fire zone in San Diego county USA

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska, you might look to:
http://www.italianbookshop.co.uk/
http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/1278/3046.php
http://www.italianbookstore.com/
Finally, Harvard has a cache of websites from many places:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rll/resources/italian/books.html
I have never ordered books from these dealers. But I did find a great Italian/American cookbook in a junk store in Wichita. It cost $8 and has a great recipe for Onion Lasagna served at an Italian Restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island and a great Manicotti recipe. There is a knock-out butter sauce for spaghetti and Alfredo Sauce made from a simple white sauce.

[mary]

Foska, I know a good Italian online book shop..one that worked well for me at any rate. I'll look it out, m

[SW Foska]

Semi-relevant practical enquiry: anyone know a good online seller of Italian books (to UK)? There used apparently to be an amazon.it, but not any more.

[dr venables preller]

Mary, my experience with Amazon is that they do in fact operate in synergy with many small booksellers.

In many cases, they offer a choice of supplier, including 'pre-owned' or remaindered copies at a favourable price.

I have bought books through Amazon which have been sent by small booksellers from scotland, cambridge and elsewhere.

From a small bookseller's point of view surplus copies taking up shelf space can be turned around by post without the 'upright browsing' (which some use as an alternative for a library) interfering with bona fide customers.

[paul potts]

Anthony Alcock and ABC about Amazon. Oh yes and oh yes. Details on demand. paulpotts@realnet.co.sz

[anthony alcock]

I'm not surprised your man found it easier to get books from Amazon than from publishers. My experience of people occupied in that business, with one exception, is that they are catatonically stupid.

[Irene]

To Candadai:

I have put down-sized versions of my reviews on Amazon of books sent to me by publishers.

Did you write the review under your full name?

[dr venables preller]

I checked the amazon sales ranking for the novel of a friend who had decided to go the route of self-publication in order, as he put it 'to exercise more targeted control in the marketing, and retain more of the profit normally donated to the middlemen.'

There may also have been a wish to leapfrog the pre-acceptance publisher backlog, and bypass Risk of rejection slip blues.

Apparently, the unit cost per book printed decreases in proportion to the size of the initial print run, which I understood in this exceptional case to be 35,000 - a figure which gave the lowest possible unit cost, and causing some surprise with the printers, prompting murmurs of need for rocket propulsion off the shelves if logistics and storage were to be managed without issue.

I understand that as his cellars might have been damp, storage pending sales was commenced 'top down' from the attic in his house.

Some years after publication I have heard that the problem of ceilings sagging and joists beyond load limits of his 5-storey house have been addressed - by using surplus copies awaiting distribution as 'pillars' to support the joists of the top storeys (packed wall to wall, floor to ceiling) from the floor below,(and floor below that), which has also allowed partial access to some of the living space in the lower floors of the building!

Savvy publishers tell me they tend to rely on bokseller estimates of demand for first novels when planning print runs.

The cautionary advice might be that promotional visits to most bookshops in the land can be more timeconsuming than might be thought, and even e-bay can experience supply saturation.

[abc]

Amazon is rubbish. We have set up a new website with less crusty bile on it. Can email you the details if you want to post

[Candadai Tirumalai]

I wished to write a brief review of a book I had read in the library for Amazon but then discovered that one has to have to bought a title from them recently. That review is therefore on hold, and Richard's post suggests that publication is by no means guaranteed.
I did read a brief Amazon review of a literary biography of Henry James, and know it to have been by a lifelong devotee of the Master.
A journalist recently lamented that his book on NASA had sold exactly 17 copies, and that included his wife's small book club.

[Michael Bulley]

nonagesima quid monstrabit pagina nona?
nonne atramentum scriptor habet nimium?

[Richard]

I am not at all sure about Amazon reviewers. I have, only once, tried to send them an unsolicited review of a book by a distant cousin of mine, 'Full of Soup and Gold: The Life of Henry Jermyn', by Anthony Adolph. I found it fascinating as it covers the period from Charles I to Charles II and beyond, with interesting new insights into the political life of the time, and the background and character of Henrietta Maria.
I was politely critical only of the editing, and also copy-editing, mainly in the middle of the book. The review never appeared and frequent requests to Amazon to find out why have led to nothing. It is still unreviewed.

[Irene]

hmm -- I'll try page 99 tomorrow.

Nichts für Ungut!

;-)

[Tim Riley]

What injustice! My book (http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Finitely-Generated-Advanced-Mathematics/dp/3764379499/sr=1-2/qid=1169500722/ref=sr_1_2/102-6455092-6720909?ie=UTF8&s=books) really should be number two or better in "General Geometry", or perhaps even fighting it out with the latest Harry Potter. But it is currently listed at Amazon.com under a wrong title and with wrong author names, and languishes at sales rank 1,213,920.