Reporting Sales

In this section:

• How can I find out my sales?
• Printed copies ≠ Sales
• When can I see sales figures from last month?
• I have negative sales? How can this be?
• What about ebook sales?
• I know lots of people bought copies in X month, but my sales are far less. How can this be?
• I want to specifically see my sales on Amazon. Can I do this?
• I got a notification that you sold my foreign rights somewhere. Where can I see a record of this?
• Notes
• Video: How can I find out my sales?

How can I find out my sales?

We provide monthly sales figures on your Financials page, by units and value in £ sterling.

Printed copies ≠ Sales

Printed copies of your book are not the same as sales of your book.

• You can see the books we print on your Production page.
• The record of your sales is on your Financials page.

In an ideal world, we would sell every copy we print, but in practice it is unlikely. We carefully manage our print runs, avoiding too many unsold copies by aiming to keep stock levels at the number of books that have sold in the previous three months.

When can I see sales figures from last month?

All figures for any given month should be uploaded by the end of the following month. E.g. February sales will be uploaded by the end of March.

I have negative sales? How can this be?

Sales numbers are sales to bookshops and not sales to individuals. Bookshops return unsold stock, which is how you can log negative sales in some months - more books are returned by bookshops than are bought.

The numbers you see are net of returned books rather than gross.

• Gross sales are the total number sold in the period, before returns from shops have been deducted.
• Net sales are the total number sold when the returns from the bookstores have been deducted.

Net sales can appear as negative, because orders from over-ambitious retailers are being returned and are often higher than more recent outgoing orders. It is now more cost-effective to pulp returned copies. So, the number you know have been sold in a particular month may not be the number shown.

Ebook sales are all direct-to-reader sales.

All ebook sales to all regions go through our North American distributor, and the reporting of those, typically, takes about one month. An ebook sold in November to a customer in London, England will appear in the North American column of your ebooks sales table page in December.

I know lots of people bought copies in X month, but my sales are far less. How can this be?

Your print sales are trade sales, not reader sales.

Trade sales are sales to bookshops and booksellers from our regional distributors combined with any you have bought through our distributors or the office,.

They are not the number of books bought by readers in that month.

I want to specifically see my sales on Amazon. Can I do this?

If you have an Amazon Author Central account you can see your Amazon sales there. These are sales to Amazon customers which Amazon source direct from our warehouses as well as those they source from other suppliers in the distribution network. The sales shown by Amazon may be stock that has already been bought by them or one of their suppliers in previous months, so may have registered on our sales figures earlier than the actual retail purchase.

Amazon also gives you access to Nielsen Bookscan sales for your book, and explains why sales reported on your JHP Financials page may be different from reports on Amazon Author Central; more information here.

I got a notification that you sold my foreign rights somewhere. Where can I see a record of this?

For foreign rights sales go to read our Foreign Rights chapter here.

Notes

• The exchange rate used changes monthly.
• The figures include sales to authors, (within Office Sales, which may involve a time lag), but no free copies issued to reviewers.
• The current monthly sales figures, going back to November 2008, are accurate, though there may be slippage from one month to the next. Prior to 2008, they are not, particularly if your book was published before January 2005. The royalty statements, however, will be accurate overall, but we have put in an approximation at times rather than checking every royalty statement for each book. Sales of ebooks prior to November 2011 are not given on the website, but will have appeared on your royalty statement.

Video: How can I find out my sales