Are you an author, editor or publisher who constantly checks the sales rankings of titles on Amazon? If so, you’ll probably get a kick out of Title Z.
TitleZ allows you to retrieve historic and current sales rankings for many of the books on Amazon, so you can see how a title has performed over time. You can search for titles by keyword, book title, author’s name or publisher. Once you have a list of titles, you can select the ones you want to compare side-by-side.
TitleZ is in beta, which means they’re still working on it, and it does seem to have a few bugs as well as hits and misses. I entered my latest novel, Can’t Get Enough, and learned that its lowest ranking ever on Amazon was 645. The highest ranking was . . . well, we won’t go there.
However, TitleZ had no historical rankings for P.G. County, the prequel to Can’t Get Enough, or for You Only Get Better, a recent fiction anthology I participated in with two other authors. Oddly, it did have historical rankings for my first and second novels, Sisters and Lovers and Big Girls Don’t Cry. But they were both published before Amazon came along, so the historical rankings can only go back to when Amazon began to keep track of rankings. Of course, if Amazon had been ranking books back when Sisters and Lovers and Big Girls Don’t Cry were first published, we all know both novels would have ranked at like number 1 or 2. Right? Right.
I can’t say how accurate the information on TitleZ is, however, when I compared rankings on TitleZ with what is listed on Amazon, TitleZ was right on the money.
At any rate, it’s fun to spend a bit of time checking out various titles even now, and the site could be helpful if you need to research the current success of titles in a genre on Amazon, such as chick lit or mysteries, or to compare titles side-by-side.
But I think if TitleZ is ever going to be really useful in the publishing industry, it’s going to have to be far more thorough in terms of the titles it supports. Right now, it appears that the developers may have even abandoned the site. Although the Amazon title ranking data appears to be up-to-date, the Book News section on TitleZ, which includes links to publishing industry articles around the web, hasn’t been updated since 2006.
Hopefully, the lag is temporary—like an attempt to raise funds to take it to the next level or something—because TitleZ has real potential as a tool for authors and publishers who are hooked on Amazon. And there are many of us.
TitleZ for authors and publishers
This week we focus on using the Internet as a tool to promote books.
Connie Briscoe Presents–
First, fiction author LaConnie Taylor-Jones will discuss the experiences she had on a virtual book tour–or blog tour–back in February of this year. LaConnie feels her virtual book tour was so successful that she’s doing another one in June for her upcoming book. LaConnie also highlights what she feels are the three biggest advantages of a virtual book tour.
Writing Tips
And I’ll provide more writing tips, specifically several resources for authors and aspiring authors that can be found on the Internet. And I’ll list some memorable and very relevant fiction writing tips attributed to a famous author.
Female gladiators? Always Interesting!
I haven’t read the book, but the trailer is stunningly good. Looks like it could be for a blockbuster film rather than a book. I couldn’t figure out who produced it, though. The book publisher appears to be in the United Kingdom. If anyone knows, do tell the rest of us.
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Want to see more? Featured book trailers.
Gotta love these ladies. Not only are Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant stellar storytellers, they’re good peeps–warm, funny, engaging.
Check out their video trailer, where they talk about how they met, got started and continue to thrive as one of the hottest writing duos in the business.
Check out the interview I conducted with them earlier this year here. They talk about how they met and how they pen their bestselling novels together as well as their latest novel.
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Want to see more? Featured book trailers.
Denene Millner is a columnist for Parenting magazine. She has worked as a senior editor at Honey and as an entertainment and political journalist for the New York Daily News. She is also the author of several books including the movie tie-in for the blockbuster film “Dreamgirls.” She lives in Atlanta with her husband and their two daughters.
Connie Briscoe: How did you end up writing Hotlanta with your co-author, Mitzi Miller?
Denene Millner: Mitzi and I got into the teen market by invitation. Alloy Media, the company behind the uber popular teen lit series The Gossip Girls, the A-List, The Clique, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, among others, was looking for a writer to pen a teen series featuring African American characters, and their reps called our agent to see if Mitzi was interested. She was, but Alloy wanted the series to be set in Atlanta, and so they were anxious to have an Atlanta-based writer on the project as well. It just so happened that a month prior to the start of those conversations, my family and I had moved to a town just outside of Atlanta.
So it kind of worked out for everyone involved; Mitzi and I, who had collaborated on the humorous non-fiction book The Angry Black Woman’s Guide to Life, and the novel, The Vow (with Angela Burt-Murray), got another opportunity to team up again, and Alloy got their Atlanta-based author.
We eventually sold the proposal to Scholastic and ended up with a three-book series, entitled Hotlanta. It’s about the lives of Sydney and Lauren Duke, the popular and privileged daughters of a wealthy Buckhead, Atlanta, couple that has a dark, mysterious, dangerous history that the girls discover. And let the drama begin . . . .
CB: You’ve published in a variety of genres–fiction, nonfiction, the movie-tie in for “Dreamgirls” and now teen fiction. Why the teen market?
Denene Millner: Why the teen market? Why not? I’ve always been passionate about books; they were my best friends when I was coming of age and a welcome respite when I got grown. And when I started writing them, they became a viable way for me to help feed my family and save up for that Yale tuition.
I’m also the mother of two beautiful little brown girls, and before our first was even born, my husband, Nick Chiles, and I filled her room with as many African American children’s books as we could find because we thought it was important for her to see characters who look like her, to hear stories that reflect her experience.
And believe it or not, just about nine years ago, those stories were few and far between. While we’re doing a lot better with picture books featuring black characters, there has been a dearth of black teen fare. So I thought writing Hotlanta provided me with the perfect opportunity to put out stories that are universally appealing, but that reach an audience that has been grossly underserved.
CB: Doesn’t that require a big shift in gears mentally?
Denene Millner: It didn’t take that vast of a mental stretch to write Hotlanta. When we wrote the proposal and the first book, my then-16-year-old niece was living with Nick and I, and my 15-year-old stepson lives with us now, so I get to see the ways of teenagers up close and personal—sometimes a little too close!—and get their input as I’m writing so that the words, the voices, and the way they deal with the situations you find in the book ring true.
But really, writing for teens isn’t about lowering your level or standards or talking in any kind of different way. We write for them the same way we do adults—in a straightforward, clear way that’s smart and exciting and interesting.
The only real challenge we had was keeping up with was the pop culture obsession of it all; by the time we’d finish referencing something teens are into and move on to the next page, we’d find out that they’re just not into that one thing anymore. But I think we did a good job of keeping current without sacrificing a good, solid story.
CB: If you had to come up with a general theme for all or most of your novels (and books) what would it be?
Denene Millner: I’m extremely passionate about shining a light on the African American experience in a way that stretches beyond stereotypes, in a way that recognizes our layers and the nuanced lives we live. For too long, all anyone interested in the black experience had to go on were the stereotypes parading across the 11 o’clock news, and I think a lot of us 90s authors—you, Terry McMillan, Benilde Little, Bebe Moore Campbell-helped show the publishing world that there’s so much more to us.
This is the philosophy I carried as a journalist for The Associated Press and the New York Daily News; I carved a niche as one of the only black journalists writing about African Americans in the film, music, TV and book industries, as well as our lifestyles. It’s important to me because it reflects my world the way I was raised, the way I’m raising my children, my friends and family, our existence here on this earth.
Seldom are we heard, but we are here—these black folks who are solidly middle class, getting good educations, succeeding at work, living a good, thoughtful, authentically black life. My books always speak to this or validate it, really.
They also serve as a testament that black love, in all of its manifestations, is possible. I see it everyday in my marriage and the marriages of my friends, family, parents, and in-laws. And I show it to my children every single day, so that they’re clear of the possibilities, too. I really hope that is the takeaway for the work I’ve done.
CB: Do you do things outside of what the publisher does to promote your books? If so, what?
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