Writing Workshop: Tracking Sales

Some of you who have been here a while might remember the writing workshop posts I've made.  That series is not dead, it's just been on hiatus.

We were in the middle of creating a business plan before, and I intend to finish this workshop series by early next year.  After that, we'll get into some writing advice.

However, today I wanted to share something different for all the would-be/will-be writers in the group:  Tracking your sales.  This is actually very important.

I've talked to other writers about how I track sales before, and why I don't think Bookfunnel or the data that KDP gives us is enough.

Some writers are way better at this than I am. I'll admit, I have to update my raw data every week or two by looking at the dashboard on KDP. Some authors can just import everything and get some of the same types of data.

But...this is how I do it. :)  As you can see, it's been a lot of fiddly, attention-to-detail work to keep this thing updated since late 2016.

This spreadsheet has been adjusted for privacy, but you can still get the gist. Right now It shows a a bit of October, full November, and a bit of December since I was setting up next month.

The cells for the end of November are blank because I hadn't inputted the raw data yet.

--------------------------------------------

Explanations for the numbers:

1. All of my titles, broken down by sales and KENP (KU reads)

2. Individual cell are individuals sales or KENP reads. For instance, the one highlighted would be KENP for Nora 2 on November 30.

3. Total amount earned per day. Each cell with sale data is multiplied by the $ amount, then the formula adds it all together and spits out a total.

4. Subtotal sole per title for the month. This is reflected in units sold or KENP read, not in dollar amounts

5. Total audio units sold for the year up to the day reflected

6. Total number of the audio units sold that were PFH

7. Amount made for the month via Royalty Share audio

8. Amount made for the month via PFH audio

9. Total $ amount made on ebook sales and KU (estimated) for the month

10. Total $ made for the month, with Audio, Ebooks, and KU

11. Total number of sales per book for the year. This is the total from the previous month added with the total for the current month.

12. Total number of KENP reads for this title for the year, added the same as #11

13. The estimated number of KU readers for the title, found by dividing the total KENP page reads by the number of KENP pages Amazon gave the book. This number is not accurate because some readers won't finish the book, but it's still good data

14. Granular breakdown of sales for the year by each title

15. Adding up numbers to feed into the PFH audio units #

16. Total $ made in royalties for 2019

17. Total $ made in royalties since originally publishing

18. $ amounts for each book after adjusting the gross price by the 70% royalty rate. This changes a bit for promos and such. I change the rates if I have a sale or whatnot so the data stays accurate.

------------------------

This methodology is very helpful for me in predicting what I'm going to be paid two months later at the close of a month. I tend to budget accordingly, and I haven't had any surprises yet.

(FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW, AMAZON PAYS ROYALTIES 2 MONTHS AFTER THE END OF THE MONTH THAT THEY WERE EARNED.  IF YOU WANT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL AUTHOR, YOU NEED TO PLAN AHEAD!) :)

Using this methodology, I can really easily track dropoff of books sales as a series progresses, and figure out if any sales worked. I can also easily go back and check historical data. Using my master spreadsheet, I can go back to 2016 and find out exactly how many copies of any of my books I sold on a specific date.

Again, I know there are easier ways to do this, but this is how I do it.

Of course, for taxes, I track everything separately. On the advice of another writer I got a separate credit card soon after publishing, and I've tried to keep most of my business expenses to just that card. This has /greatly/ simplified my tax preparation at the end of the year.

I hope this helps someone!

-BC