I want to see sales figures for BEST SELLERS

If Blurb is going to announce BEST SELLERS then they should make public how many copies have been sold. I would like to know how many copies of most of the books listed on here have sold, so I would have an idea of what to expect when my book is finaly up for sale

I’m  not so sure, I lean towards thinking that the number of books I sell should be strictly beteen me, Blurb (and the taxman?) unless I give Blurb permission to make that public.

......Tony

I would think, in my humble opinion, is totally not necessary. But there is awesome feature is included “Best Sellers” book in bookstore as a cue or hint.

On a final note, I would think it might be burden on side of Blurb’s backend coding to shows the realtime sale figures in public. I would think that best leave to Bookmakers’ private account activity that shows weekly sales report or something like that.

Really, who cares what people on other lists think? Blurb is not trying to be Barnes and Noble or Waldenbooks or Amazon.com. They’re in the business of making it easy for users to self-publish. If users are interested in massive public sales, then they need to market their book to a publisher that also does distribution and assigns ISBN codes, etc.

Using Blurb is a very good way to publish a short run printing of a book with a targeted market. So far, I’ve published 17 books with copy sales of 232. That works for me. I, in no way, shape or form expect that I am going to sell any of my books to casual perusers of the Blurb bookstore. That’s not my market.

Though I would like to know how books are selling, I agree with CWN. Blurb is the perfect place to create and sell short run books with a narrow target market. I published one book in 08 from a very specific event for a very narrow market. I have sold about 105 of these books, with about 15 different covers thanks to Booksmart and the ease with which I could change the cover, and people have been thrilled with the product and the fact that they can get a quality book from a very small event. The book also drew a "real" publisher to my work and I now have a deal for 09 for a coffee table book that will have much broader appeal and they will do all the layout and printing etc. I just get paid to shoot.

You can use a hammer to drive in a screw but the end result will always be better if you have the right tool for the job. Blurb addresses a very specific market and I believe that it does it well.

Though I am always interested in how other books are selling, here most of these books that sell in any numbers have a narrow market. Local atheltic teams, specific events etc. I don’t believe this the place to market a general interest coffee table book.

Sorry for the ramble and the on and off topic

Scooter

Could the sales figures be released in graphical form? This could display the quantity of sales distribution. Because there is no need to publish corresponding titles or authors, privacy would be maintained.

I doubt that very many books are sold from the Bookstore. The majority of Just Published books seem to be of weddings, births, vacations – very personal limited audience books. I’ve noticed lately that a lot of the books don’t even have the Preview option open. I think in some cases this might have been an oversight since the books did not appear to be strictly private. Now that we have the Comment option, we can’t comment because a book has no preview. It seems to me that a book could sell as few as 5 copies & become a Best Seller simply because no other book sold more than 5. I don’t know if Blurb distinguishes between books bought by the author & books bought by the public.

I don’t think sales figures of my book are anybody elses business. 

Somebody above mentioned box office totals for films. That may be useful for shareholders and exhibitors, etc., but I suspect most self-published books don’t have stakeholders the way major Hollywood studio movies do and needn’t be held to the same accounting. 

Also, apples vs. grapes vs. watermelons.

I can create a slim 5×8 softcover text book at $5 per copy; or I can create a fat 12×12 hardcover book for $185.  

For a three dollars I can buy the former book sixty times and stock them in my closet. If I take money out of my left pocket and put it in my right pocket, does that qualify as a "best seller"? 

Alternately, if I purchase ten of the latter to give to my family, that’s the equivalent of more than 300 copies of a 5×8 softcover book. Would it be counted as such?

I understand that some want to keep their privacy, but if some poeple don’t mind telling us how much books did they sell, it could give a clearer idea about sales.
Thank you.

As a relative newcomer to Blurb I’ve spent time perusing the Best Seller list to see what I can learn from it. It seems to me that some books were for an obvious niche market that will produce good sales, whilst others frankly left me wondering why they were there!

On thing I particularly noticed was an almost complete dearth of comments attached to the book details. I thought this strange as when something is popular it’s usual to find positive remarks about it.

How often is this list compiled/.updated – daily, weekly, monthly??? Are the results based on total sales revenue or number of copies sold? Are purchases by the author counted, or only on-line sales to third parties?

Of the two books I’ve made public I’ve sold 14 copies – two of those were purchased on-line (but I’m not on the Best Sellers list yet!).