Using Stats to Pick ePublisher

Believe it or not, a lot of writers are now beginning their writing career by going to electronic publishing route. They think they're chances are better with ePublishers than with traditional print publishers. They're vehemently supportive of ePublishing.

Facts Are Friendly

While they don't assert that they're making as much as A list print published authors, many proclaim that they're making more money than those that are print-published by small presses.

The point of this blog isn't to take issue with any of the above statements, but to point out ways authors can verify ePublishers' claims as to their traffic. So if you've decided to get published by an electronic or online publisher, you might want to do your own web analysis.

Site Analytics

Most websites are rated by how many unique visitors visit the site's pages as well as how many seconds they spend on the site. Unique Visitors counts a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month because they originate from the same IP address. Unique Visitors are typically used to determine how popular a site is. Therefore, most web analytic sites consider additional metrics in order to determine the popularity of a given site.

This way, if sites buy a lot of advertising across the web and drive up their Unique Visitor count, even though many of the visitors may leave the site immediately, there are other tools that measure how much time people actually spend on the site as well as how many pages of the site they look at on average during each visit. This is a truer measurement of a site's popularity.

There are many businesses that provide this kind of in depth analysis, usually for a subscription fee. Some sites though offer a trial period where you can test their metrics for yourself.

Some website analysis businesses are: Google Analytics, Omniture, Stat Counter, and Piwik. Read, Write, Web lists several analytic services.

How This Helps

You want to pick the right publisher to ePublish your front list or your back list. That publisher needs to have a website with decent traffic. You can compare the actual stats for a website against other websites in order to pick a publisher that has the most traffic. If your book is going to be sold mainly through the publisher's website, this is of great importance to you. I mean, you can have the best book in the world, but if the traffic is too little, you won't sell enough to buy a cup of coffee.

With my subscription to one of these services, I decided to compare the ePublishers I had heard mentioned most often. I was surprised by the findings. Sorry, I can't tell you which web analytics I used, but I will give you the results. This survey was done 9 months ago so don't consider it an accurate representation of the sites' current visitor statistics. Do your own analysis.

Remember: these stats are 9 months old, and unique visitors, as explained above, are counted.

Website ----------- Monthly Unique Visitors -- Yearly Trend

Amber Quill ----------- 2 -- no trend

Black Lyon ----------- 1,075 -- no trend

Bold Strokes ----------- 3,347 -- up 40.5%

Champagne Books ----------- 1,868 -- up 262.7%

Dragon Moon Press ----------- 831 -- up 22.2%

Ellora's Cave ----------- 194 -- up 136.6%

eXtasybooks ----------- 3,283 -- down 39.3%

Freya's Bower ----------- 3,160 -- up 100.1%

Granite Books ----------- 915 -- 386.7%

Harlequin ----------- 178,268 -- down 33.6%

Hard Shell ----------- 1,031 -- down 27.1%

Highland Press ----------- 861 -- up 60.3%

Imajinn Books ----------- 1,446 -- down 54.5%

Juno Books ----------- 1,767 -- up 427.5%

Linden Bay Romance ----------- 1,141 -- down 45%

Loose ID ----------- 9,480 -- up 22.5%

Mundania ----------- 2,079 -- up 206.6%

New Concepts ----------- 11,783 -- up 15%

Resplendence ----------- 1,901 -- up 1433.1%

Samhain ----------- 23,363 -- up 19.7%

Siren ----------- 6,136 -- up 123.2%

Virgin Books ----------- 1,002 -- down 55.2%

Whiskey Creek Press ----------- 4,401 -- up .4%

Wild Rose Press ----------- 149 -- down 67.4%

Takeaway Truth

Writers need to be good business people. In today's world, that means understanding web analytics and their many applications.