• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register
Publishers Lunch logo Publishers Lunch logo
  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help
Login Sign Up
  • Personnel
  • AI
  • Compensation
  • Unions
  • Book Bans
  • New Releases
  • Earnings
  • The Trial
  • Archives
Publishers Lunch logo
  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help
  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

December 9, 2010By Michael Cader

Amazon Provides Authors with Limited Nielsen BookScan Data

December 9, 2010By Michael Cader

As of today Amazon is letting authors enrolled in their “Author Central” program (e.g. FiledBy for Amazon) access a small window of Nielsen BookScan sales data for their own books. Needless to say, the offer is a major inducement for authors not already enrolled to sign up for the Author Central. The program shows the most recent four weeks of sales as tracked by Nielsen, on a week-by-week basis. It also provides geographical breakdowns, showing the same limited data set according to local DMA markets. They provide a nice visual national mapping of the data that Nielsen itself provides to customers only as a set of numbers.

It does not provide any other Nielsen BookScan information (historical sales; year-to-date or lifetime sales totals; breakdowns by sales segment, etc.), and results are posted on a delayed timetable compared to the availability of the information to trade subscribers, posting at 3:00 Eastern time on Fridays. There is a prominent contact form to request more data from Nielsen for a fee. And Amazon is not providing authors any data on the site’s own book, or ebook, sales.

There is reaction aplenty online, of course. We learned about the news from the press release just like the rest of the world–and though it’s admittedly self-serving, one can see how this initiative might further increase interest among agents for the Nielsen Publishers Marketplace BookScan service that we announced less than a month ago. Our premium service allows agents unlimited searches of the BookScan database, shows complete data sets (including lifetime and year-to-date sales), and is updated every Wednesday, as soon as the new week’s data is available.

We also provide a complete package of BookScan’s more than 70 weekly bestseller lists, along with our own “book tracker” feature to automatically follow sales results for up to 10 ISBNs with a single click.

We know that many agents have always wanted and needed access to the same data that publishers rely on. Now that authors will have ready access of their own to just glimpses of this data, we’re even more pleased that we were able to make a full-service offering available to interested agents. For a full description of our new service, visit here.
Amazon description page

Filed Under: Authors, Bestseller Radar, Free, Statistics

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login

Forgot Password Quick Pass User Login
Get Full Access
The Publishing Industry’s Essential Daily Read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • James Frey Has Rich Friends, and They Like His New Book June 12, 2025 WSJ
  • Leon Levy Foundation Awards $300,000 Grant to the Authors Guild Foundation to Preserve Literary Advocacy Archives June 10, 2025 Authors Guild
  • Trending: Tote Bags That Hold Just A Book June 10, 2025 Elle
  • Hadley, MA B&N Workers OK Union Contract After Two Years of Negotiation June 6, 2025 Daily Hampshire Gazette
  • Authors Guild Update On Albert Whitman Bankruptcy Hearing June 5, 2025 AG post
  • "Frozen Yogurt and Fiction Collide" As Pinkberry Promotes Emily Henry (And Their Limited Flavor, Summer Melon Crush) June 3, 2025 Press release
  • JennaFest Draws 200 Readers; She Says She Is Collaborating On a Screen Project with Elin Hilderbrand June 2, 2025 Today
  • Chicago Sun-Times Investigation Admits Everyone Remotely Connected to Bogus AI Supplement Was Lazy, Greedy, or Both May 30, 2025 Sun-Times
  • Shocker: Unbound Successor Boundless Backs Off Promise to Paid Owed Royalties, As Co-Founder and Publisher John Mitchinson Leaves May 30, 2025 Bookseller
  • Why Has BookTok Turned On Creator Luke Bateman? May 30, 2025 Marie Claire Australia
Publishers Marketplace logo

Contact Us

News

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Report News
  • Discuss
  • Classifieds
  • Rights Offerings

Deals

  • Report A Deal

Books

  • Buzz Books

Jobs

  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy Terms of Use