James, you need to understand the difference between orders and sales. "Sales" through B&T and Ingram are NOT sales; they are orders from bookstores. Ingram's automated stock status is for orders from bookstores, NOT sales to people. That means that bookstores have ordered the book for their shelves; they can return it at any time. I will agree with you that Bookscan is only one indicator of a book's success, but when you are talking about a book that has only trade appeal (it isn't going to be used in classes, for example, so specialty sales to museum stores or teacher supply stores are generally going to be very small--especiall if there is NO sales force out there selling it), Bookscan gives a good 70% of the picture. Selling foreign rights to books is just that: selling the rights. You can't count copies of the books those foreign publishers have sold as an indicator of the success of the POD version. And I hate to tell you, James, but ALL trade bookstore sales are consignment sales; there's no such thing as nonreturnable in the booktrade--that means that until your book leaves the bookstore tucked in a happy readers's backpack, it's still ripe for returning by the bookstore to the wholesaler to the distributor, to the publisher.
Regarding Amazon sales figs, they really don't mean anything--it's a good indicator that there is interest in the book, sure ,but since it's published by a small publisher with little in the way of distribution, Amazon is likely the primary vendor, so of course his numbers will be high there.
I am really happy for this guy you are talking about--I'm happy when any author has success, because that's what it is all about--but I object to the way you use one person's mild success with POD to suggest that The Revolution is here. I also object to the insinuation that I don't know what I'm talking about. I do.
Good luck with your books.