Data Transparency Post from a Debut Author

Alrighty, it’s been about a month since Moonrising’s release, and I’m ready to talk data!

If you’ve been reading my Substack for a while or know me IRL, you know I’m a data nerd. As a debut author at an independent press, I know each sale makes a difference, and I’ve been trying to understand what moves the needle by paying close attention to the data I have at my disposal.

The most accurate comprehensive data I have access to comes from Amazon. I recently learned that books with an ISBN 13 starting in 979 do not show up on Amazon Author Central’s Bookscan data, so I have even less data than most debut authors. 😭But let’s see what I can tell from the data I do have!

Paperback

Look at that beautiful graph! Here’s what I learned:

• Cover reveal and pre-order link live - Rank 29,184

• Begging on all social media platforms to pre-order from Amazon - Rank 12,547

• Launch - Rank 59,223

Here’s the pitch on Facebook that I think was most responsible for the jump in early May.

And the follow up:

E-Book

What about Kindle?

• Cover reveal and pre-order link live - Rank 66,026

• Begging everywhere to pre-order from Amazon - Rank 105,731

• Launch - Rank 4,837

Similar trend, but there’s something really interesting here. After my launch, people were much more likely to buy a digital copy of Moonrising than from all my pre-order asks. This makes sense to me! Pre-orders are more likely to be people who know me. They care about getting their copy signed. They want to take a photo with it and keep it on their shelves. Post-launch sales are much more likely to be people who don’t know me at all and are simply interested in the premise of a sci-fi romance set on a Moon colony. They want to read it once on their Kindle and move onto the next book.

And the initial data I’ve received from my publisher tracks that. I’m not going to share raw numbers here (though honestly if you email me and ask nicely I’d be happy to share privately). My first two week sales were 59% paperback and 31% e-books. I was doing my own tracking (of course!) every time someone pre-ordered and I’d say about 60% of the paperback sales I was personally responsible for from either IRL friends and family or internet friends. But only a handful of my e-book sales were sold to my network.

Audiobook

Finally, audiobooks! Moonrising’s audiobook was done by a third party, Recorded Books, so I don’t have any publisher data on that—at least not yet. But I can see Amazon data from that too:

• Audiobook pre-order link live - Rank 71,860

• Launch - Rank 73,302

Audiobooks seem like they’re going to be a slow burn for me. It seems like we’re holding steady-ish since launch with no big spikes like the other formats.

Goodreads

I have some other data to share too. Goodreads adds data is super interesting. (Side note - will you be my 50th Goodreads review? Please???)

Those two enormous spikes are the first and last days of a Goodreads Giveaway my publisher did. It clearly had a big impact on people adding Moonrising to their to-read lists. (Did it impact sales? No idea!)

Indie Bookstores

I also have some insight on indie book sales. Looking at the website of my favorite bookstore, City Lit, where I did my launch, I can see I’m currently ranked 16,596 in bestsellers. This is from a network of independent bookstores that pool data together.

Unfortunately, this data isn’t tracked over time, so I have to rely on screenshots I’ve taken to understand the trends. On July 3 (pre-launch), I was 73,844 and on July 19, I was 12,307. So there definitely was a launch boost!

Need…More…Data…

So that’s what I’ve got! Is it enough? Nope, nope, nope. But at least it’s telling me something. If you have other data sources I can obsessively check, please share in the comments!

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already bought a copy of my book. But if you haven’t, I’d really appreciate the support! (Pre-order here from Amazon or from everywhere else here.)

If you’ve finished Moonrising, please write a review! My publisher has my pitch for my third book in their hands! They are paying attention to the number of reviews on Amazon! Please write one. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back with more data posts when I have something new to share.

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Save the Date:

• Saturday, September 6 at 2:00 p.m. - Book Reading at Plot Twist Used Books

Order Moonrising:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Books A Million

• Target

Order Moonrising’s audiobook:

• Amazon

• Libro.fm

• Google Play

• Kobo