Business Posts: Data & Admin Tracking

Someone recently asked what we track after my lasts random look behind the scenes post. So here's what we have. It's not an exhaustive list; because I sometimes forget all the admin things that happen. But here we go:

Unit Sales & Revenue

This is the obvious one, of course. Track your revenue, how much you're making and the like. However, let's break it down:

- by series

- by format (audiobook, ebook, kindle unlimited, hardcover, print)

- by language (by translations and languages and then, within those, by format)

- by distributor (and again, by format and language)

- when (obviously)

- in terms of $ revenue and units (i.e. numbers sold). In some cases, approximations of how many books sold.

- by type (shorts, comics, novellas, series books) 

All of that is the basics, just how much money we make, for each series, in what format and why. Simple, no?

Harder when you sell wide and have multiple series.

General Revenue

- yeah, this includes stuff like our subscription payments from Patreon and also from Climbing the Rank subscribers

- advances and payouts from there 

- secondary income (Youtube ad revenues, affiliate ad revenue)

Marketing Statistics

- readthrough rates (total and per book)

- average reader value per series

- average $ value for a credit / sale on Audible (sometimes, we start and stop this one)

- advertising spend (by channel) per series (and total for everything)

- date of promotions & sales increase/change (Kindle daily sales, prime sales, promo sales)

- ROI per series based off advertising spend. Also, total advertising spend ROI

- Outreach potential:

• Amazon followers

• Instagram, TikTok & other social media followers

• Goodreads and Bookbub followers

• Youtube followers

• Newsletter numbers (organic and inorganic suscribers)

Depending on the series we also track:

- direct expenses (cover, formatting, art, audiobook narration)

- advertising expenses (especially launch month and pre-launch promotions)

- net profit/loss

Administrative & Data Tracking

- All our contracts

- All the various versions of a book, the files, the art we have, etc.

- Social media graphics and when / where and templates

- Everything that has been written, first date publishing, ISBNs, links, pricing, translations, which distributor we're using, etc.

- If something has been printed by someone else (shorts); who did it, when and when the exclusive agreements are over. Same with any other work that has exclusivity agreements (when it's over, when we need to contact them if we want to break the contract, etc.).

- Number of words written, what dates, on which book / series. Totaled into how much I write for the year, etc.

- All our supplier contact information

- Editor, narrator & artist information, who we've worked with, their contact information, their rates, and thoughts on for further projects, etc.

- Project timelines, when we're doing what, what needs to be done, when and at what stage each of those works are 

- calendar of events (also, sales at events if we do sales at them, though we're much sloppier on this because sale events aren't something we do much of). 

- Templates for how we do things.

I'm sure I'm missing a ton. This is just what I recall in 20-30 minutes of typing... but yeah; everything we can do, it's recorded.