Amazon KDP Sales Report Glitch

Update 9:35 AM EST response from KDP posted at the bottom of this post. I still have some questions as I never heard of this happening before and I would have assumed any extra costs would have been strictly due to Amazon shipping costs, which has absolutely nothing to do with me. Amazon typically lists the breakdown in the pricing section for titles. I also believe very few authors have actually encountered this situation because the statistical fact is that the vast majority of authors sell hardly any books over the course of their lifetimes, let alone to an international audience. I’m fortunate enough to be able to not only advertise, but also to have in-depth working knowledge of website creation and SEO skills. Also, coloring books lack the necessity of text making translations unecessary.

If the person or company made this purchase would like to reply to this post or write me privately, I’d really appreciate hearing from your experience. I would also like to personally thank you for going out of your way to order this title. It really does mean so much to me. I truly hope it lives up to your expectations and additional costs. If I could make these titles more widely available and more affordable, please know that I would do so in a heartbeat.

I just wanted to mention that I encountered another issue with Amazon’s KDP Dashboard and reports. This time it involves a new glitch. I still haven’t gone into any detail regarding the major one that was uncovered a few months back that involved EU antitrust laws, but will write about that in due time. This glitch involves incorrect royalties estimates.

Without going into too much financial detail, The Amazing Animal Coloring Book is currently on sale at $7.99. With KDP, you subtract the printing costs and after that remains profits, which are then typically split 60/40 with Amazon receiving 40% of the proceeds. At $7.99, my rough math comes in at just under $2 US/book. Now if you’re lucky and you sell one book per day, you can probably do the math.

Problem is that the KDP dashboard shows stats that are not in real-time. They often show sales once an item is physically shipped and a card is charged. This can occur 1-2 days after someone first submits the purchase. It’s also inconclusive from speaking with numerous reps how Amazon Ads actually reflects on the KDP dashboard. Often, sales made through Amazon Ads do reflect the sales more rapidly, although there’s often a lag with that too.

It’s not unheard of to sell a few books on one day, but then a day or two later the KDP dashboard backdates and suddenly shows additional books being sold for that time period. Confusing? That’s because it is. It also makes knowing what is working such as ads a complete nightmare to track.

But anyways—back to my latest issue. KDP shows that I sold X amount of The Amazing Animal Coloring Book yesterday. However, it shows that I made $7.48 for a single sale. In order for me to make this kind of money, either I had to sell around four of these books in one shot, or more simply this reflects a pricing glitch. I just spoke on the phone with an Amazon KDP rep and he said it was his first time seeing this issue and is forwarding it on to the technical team. So I’m in a pattern of waiting to hear back.

While this may not seem like a big deal, because after all who doesn’t want to get overpaid, but it is. The reason being is that 4-5 extra sales can mean a substantial difference in Amazon ranking and category placements. For books, this is referred to as BSR or Best Sellers Rank. The lower that  number is, the better. It suddenly means you’re showing up in Amazon searches as well as Amazon ads outside of their website.

So four to five sales within a short period should impact most books greatly. It would suddenly rocket your title up the ranks. While that’s not going to likely make your title a best-seller overnight, every bit helps. And if there’s a glitch in the system which I have “confirmed” (Amazon always refer to their reporting as “estimates”—how convenient,) then in a sense an author is being cheated out of the system due to this error.

As I’ve said in the past, Amazon has a closed system in which people such as myself can’t see how their internal numbers work. As a KDP author, we are even more limited as to seeing sales statistics and being able to even track outside advertising methods to see what works and what doesn’t. KDP authors are at their mercy. Or, as some monopolies might argue—if you don’t like it, you can always go somewhere else.