Book Proposal - evaluating competition, books sold?

keston925

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Hey there,

When writing the "competition - similar books" section of a book proposal I have read to include how many of these books were sold.

Is there a way to find that out?

If not, how have you worked through this section?
 

JournoWriter

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It's virtually impossible to get.
 

veinglory

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You can't, not does it seem to be the normal to do so. But you could certainly indicate whether it sold well or not based in indirect evidence.

What I do is show how books with similar virtues as my proposal did well but are not direct competitors, and how anything that might look like a direct competitor isn't and sucks because it was not as awesome as my book will be. Then I check how other books by that publisher might fit into this picture.
 
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Siri Kirpal

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Very few proposals actually include stats like that. But if the book is a bestseller, say so.

If your topic is oddball (mine is), you can include best-selling books whose readers might like yours.

But basically, what you're doing is compare and contrast.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

WeaselFire

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I've never given sales figures of competitor's work and have never been asked. Never knew anyone would even care since agents and publishers have access to these statistics already. I do differentiate my proposal from existing works, with a short explanation of why mine is better.

Jeff
 
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plumone

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Two ideas, both pulled from Dan Poynter's Self Publishing Manual-
Call Ingram's number (615- 213- 6803). Punch in the ISBN of your competition books. The number will tell you how many copies of that book are in Ingram's warehouses, and how many copies Ingram sold last year and this year. Ingram handles more than half of the books sales in the world. These are not exact sales figures, but they will give you some range.
Amazon shows sales ranks for books. You can also search around on www.titlez.com/welcome.aspx. That site has historical Amazon data.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Ingram doesn't do Amazon, though, and Amazon is the biggest seller. Not sure about Barnes and Noble either.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

JournoWriter

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plumone: The Ingram number reportedly shut down five years ago, and the web link you provided goes to a placeholder page.
 

plumone

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Sorry for the failed links.
I went on Ingram's site and their main line is 615.793.5000, so perhaps they shut down the 6803 extension. Maybe give that a call and see if they have info regarding book sales.
 

SkyAzurePublishing

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We'd agree with Veinglory on this one.

Also, if the agent / publisher already has access to the data and you present numbers which are inaccurate based on a mixture of incomplete data and your own extrapolations, ask yourself whether that gives the agent/publisher a desirable impression of your research skills in a genre where such skills are absolutely crucial. A good researcher knows when to take a step back and realise that there's no way to make convincing point C from datasets A and B...
 

juliesondra

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I'm not sure how useful my comment here will be, but in my book proposal for the same thing, I didn't discuss sales figures so much as why my book provides something that its competition does not.

However, my topic was pretty niche and only two other books had been published that focused entirely on the subject. One was a textbook for academic audiences (while mine was for the layperson), and the other was a self-published book. I'm honestly no expert on book proposals, but I thought the purpose of discussing your competition was to show that you are aware of what's already out there and to show you have both the chops to compete and a reason to put another title on this topic into the marketplace. The only reason I can think of why someone would want to know sales figures for competing titles would be to determine whether (and to what extent) interest exists for your topic, I guess.

Bonus points if you can call your book "the first book to [xyz]" or "the only book to [zyx]."
 

Siri Kirpal

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My understanding is that the main reason to have that section is so the marketing people can figure out where it would go in a bookstore.

I have not found the 'my book is the first x' to be an irresistible draw. More's the pity, in my case.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

[Arc]Will

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I don't think it's possible to get the actual number of books sold, but I think you might be able to get some indirect data by putting the book's title into something like Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/
 

SunshineonMe

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Amazon has a popularity ranking on each of its books. You can google what each ranking means, as far as books sold per day. By also stating the books publication date, you can say "So and so was published 14 months ago, and still sells 50 copies a day on Amazon, according to its ranking." It's not a lot, but is something.
 

veinglory

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I think it is a level of detail most publishers are not seeking. They basically want to know how books in the niche are doingon a scale from badly to well, they don't need the minutiae of how you determined that. And keep in mind that a direct competitor selling well may not be good news.
 

wallfull

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I include approximate Amazon sales rank, rounded to the nearest 1000/10,000/100,000. It's very inexact and subject to manipulation, but it's something.