You may have recently noticed a new bit of information on Amazon search and book detail pages. In the screenshots below, you’ll see the average star rating, Goodreads stats, then an additional stat showing how many people have bought or read the book in the past month.
Amazon’s help page for authors says, “Book trends data includes purchases across all book formats, Kindle ebook reading, and Audible listening from the previous month, in search and on detail pages. This information is updated daily and accounts for customer engagement across all of a book’s formats. Book trends data is not a sales report—it is meant to give an indication of customer engagement—and the numbers you see in your sales report will not be comparable. There is a minimum level of engagement for book trends data to appear for your book, so this number may increase, change, or disappear depending on your title’s recent popularity. The criteria for book trends data are the same across all titles. While all books are eligible for this feature, not all customers will see book trends data during the testing period.”
Some authors have expressed anger and frustration that what they consider private information is now being made public by Amazon.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
