How to know who buys your book

It seems odd that the only way you can keep tabs on who has bought your book is if you sign up for the "set your price" option. I am not in the USA so for me that is not even an option. I much prefer Blurb over Lulu but with this faclility Blurb really fails to deliver.  With Lulu I am emailed when a book is sold and it shows who has bought it. Surely this the first and foremost function any person selling books online would require?

 Be cool if this function was created, sooner rather than later :-)

Hi Jack

Thanks for the reply. I look forward to it being developed. Also, when do you think we will be able to upload hi res PDFs of our books if we want to design something more bespoke, or do you think it will always be through booksmart?

Cheers Jim 

”... we should be able to monitor who is purchasing our book.”

Am I the only one who thinks this is creepy? If you sell a book at a book store, you don’t get the name and address of each person who buys it. I think there is long standing precedent that what a person choose to read, whether checked out from a library or bought in a store, should be their private information.

That said, I wholly understand the desire to thank people and keep in touch. Perhaps Blurb should implement this as an opt-in option for the buyer. I think if I buy I book, I should get to decide if I want the author, or anyone else for that matter, to know.

Jim,

As for uploading high resolution PDF, I wish it is true with Blurb. IN a word, no, at the moment as I understand it. Only done through BookSmart application.

I would love to see high resolution PDF submission to Blurb, perhaps at a premium fee or that Blurb offering professional premium service for talented designers or photograhers where they can upload high resolution PDFs to be published through Blurb.

Perhaps that you want to file a suggestion feedback on the topic. I have pushed for this issue few times already. I don’t think Blurb would hear from quite few people asking for high resolution PDF submission, but if there are lot of frequently asking for this feature to be included, who knows some day.

We better start to bug Blub people and bother them and ask them to reconsider this. :)

I have published two books through the University of Iowa Press and the only sales info I get is my yearly royalty check which indicates how many copies of each were sold over the calendar year. Bookstores don’t share the customer data bases as per names, et al, so to think  Blurb would do otherwise is really not realistic.

 You get "metrics" which show how many people have hit your book and you get "order" data as per number of orders. Both of these functions provide a way of tracking your profits and an idea of yopur book’s "curb appeal" – obviiously, we all want LOTS of hits, because then the law of averages predict we should eventually begin making sales. 

Look through the "Best Sellers" category as a way to compare your work with what the market indicates as successful design and subject matter.