Skip to content

Eoin Purcell's Blog

It's that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

  • Home
  • About Eoin
  • Other Writing
  • Blog Policies

Day: December 15, 2010

Amazon’s Power Play: Nielsen Data As A Gateway Drug

December 15, 2010 ~ Eoin Purcell ~ 6 Comments

I’ve seen a lot of comment about Amazon’s offer of 4 weeks free Nielsen data to writers through their Author Central product. Some of it is fair and some of it is unfair.

I think it’s fair to say that authors will like this, that publishers should really have been making access to sales data more freely available to authors anyway and that in general access to the data will be both useful and enlightening to some authors.

I think it’s unfair to say that not allowing access to Nielsen data showed how foolish/badly-run/outdated the industry was. Most of the time I’d wager the publishers’ agreements with Nielsen had strict rules about dispersing such data and who could access the information where.

From the author perspective Dave Cullen put’s the case for having some kind of sales data access well in his post on the topic, but you can guess from what I’ve said about that I disagree with about as much as I agree with in his post overall.

I’m interested to see that the debate has centred on sales and how this makes authors more conscious of sales as in the LA Times Jacket Copy blog:

In recent years, individual authors have increasingly been asked to take part in the marketing and promotion of their own books. Publishers have faced budget cutbacks, and the Internet has provided authors with more ways of reaching readers — and potential book buyers. Amazon sees the Nielsen BookScan data as a tool to that end. “The geographic view of print sales will help authors identify trends to help their promotion efforts and enables authors to develop more effective methods for reaching the widest possible audience,” Amazon’s Kinley Campbell wrote in an e-mail.

Just in time for Christmas, Amazon may be turning authors into an army of booksellers.

But I’m also certain that this misses the mark. Think about what this move has cost Amazon. First off, money. And I’d wager quite a chunk of money, it’s no mean service they have rolled out to authors. Secondly it will have pissed off publishers somewhat. Now you might say Amazon don’t care about that, but I say they do up to a point, and that point is where the amount of trouble caused by pissing off publishers is outweighed by the amount of good this does Amazon.

So what good DOES this do for Amazon? Well it creates a compelling reason for an author to open an Amazon Author Central account. It enables Amazon to gain rich metadata about those authors to help them increase sales. It probably enables Amazon to cross promote other author services like CreateSpace and Kindle’s DTP. In that sense, the data will be Amazon’s lure to authors who will be reluctant to forgo the stats once the have them (and boy do I know the power of stats) and so may be inclined to pool their service deals with one provider. This will be especially important if (as seems to be the case) digital sales increase and more and more authors move independent.

It also gives Author Central a USP over say Facebook, Twitter, Filedby or some other platform that an author might wish to spend time building a network from. In that sense it is a play to aggregate author information and enable Amazon to stay ahead of the game.

This is not Amazon being generous or simply throwing its money around wastefully, this is clearly a well thought through long-term strategy to create a great reason for authors to have a good Author Central profile. Who knows, perhaps soon only authors with proper pics and biogs will have access to the data.

It’s less about making the writers booksellers and more about making them data-entry clerks and using the aggregated data to sell books and selling the authors other services too.

Or maybe I’m just being a cynic.
Eoin

View Eoin Purcell's profile on LinkedIn
Follow @eoinpurcell

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 7,582 other followers

My Twitter

  • RT @egy_philosopher: Almost 4,000 years ago an Egyptian civil servant, worried for his life, fled north and found himself in the land inhab… 1 week ago
  • RT @AndyRileyish: TV and Film industry: if you want more working class voices in the writing, and you all say you do, (a) pay writers promp… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @BBCAfrica: "It’s very painful. We struggle to raise our children and somebody comes and uses them as a business." #BBCAfricaEye and #B… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @goachwriter: Surprise! My debut novel, THE EDGE, is coming out this autumn! I've dreamt of being a published author since I was little… 3 weeks ago
  • RT @Leodora_: Really thrilled to be publishing this exceptional thriller from exciting new talent, @goachwriter! Knocks my socks of upon ev… 3 weeks ago

Top Posts

  • Our Grannies' Recipes - book sales!
  • Ancient Folk Tales of Ireland:

Recent Posts

  • Go Read This | Thomas & Mercer signs five books from Koontz
  • Go Read This | Sanderson Generates $20M In Kickstarter Pledges
  • Go Read This | The Economist on Romance Publishing
  • Go Read This | Pearson warns it is near ‘bottom of valley’ as US downturn takes toll
  • Go Read This | The Guardian on Scientific Publishing & Robert Maxwell

Archives

Categories

December 2010
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Nov   Jan »
Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • Eoin Purcell's Blog
    • Join 7,582 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Eoin Purcell's Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar