Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>
> On 22 sept. 06, at 14:19, Sean Andrews wrote:
>
>> Do these numbers count for orders made even if there isn't stock to
>> fill it?
>
> Why wouldn't it be so ? People order, send their payment and wait for
> Amazon to get them the book.
>
> Jean-Christophe Helary
Point taken, but, anecdotally, because Amazon may not get the stock to fill them, as has happened to me on several occasions. I buy, they sell, tell me it will be here in 3 weeks; 2 months go by, they delay it a few times. Then they cancel. So, on the day that I buy "Debating Empire," the sales rating shoots up (because no one else was buying it), even though it was never sent to me (and, strangely, I still feel whole). In other words, it isn't really a sales figure but a measure of effective demand (or something like that).
Which leads me to wonder what percentage of their transactions end this way. Most of what I buy there is used so I don't have that problem, but out of the twenty or so books I've bought directly from Amazon this year, two of them ended this way. Both of the books were recent publications and were technically in print. On the other hand, both were also published by Verso and, in general, it has been a pain in the ass to get some of their books lately. So maybe this has more to do with the publishers in this case.
Still, the point it that these can't really be called sales numbers because the merchandise has yet to be delivered. I guess that's sort of beside the point since it still works as an index of the sudden, increased popularity of a book or CD, but an observation nonetheless.
-s