Episode Summary
“What is measured can be improved.” It’s a philosophy to live by, but for authors who are trying to make a living from book sales, it’s advice worth taking to heart! In this episode of Self Publishing Insiders, D2D’s own lovable on-staff author Mark Leslie Lefebvre talks with Philppa A. Werner about tracking sales across retailers and services using ScribeCount.
Episode Notes
Mark Leslie Lefebvre interviews Philippa A. Werner, Director of Strategic Partnerships and the public face of ScribeCount.
ScribeCount is an easy to use, all-in-one sales reporting platform currently servicing sales from Amazon, Apple, Google, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Draft2Digital. ScribeCount offers every feature to every subscriber, regardless of their payment tier, including: Dynamic reporting from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, Kobo, Apple, and Draft2Digital A worldwide sales map showing what counties your books are selling in; and much more.
Available with a 14-Day Free Trial. Learn more at https://www.scribecount.com/
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
Mark Lefebvre, Philip A. Warner
Mark Lefebvre 00:03
Hello, and welcome to draft to digital self publishing insiders. This is Mark Leslie Lafave from draft to digital and I am honored to have with me in the virtual studio today, Philip, a warner, welcome.
Philip A. Warner 00:17
Hello, good to be here.
Mark Lefebvre 00:19
So we’re going to talk about scribe count, I’m really excited to talk about scribe count. But first, I want to get into the background of scribe count because there’s you and there’s another person and you’re writers and you’re trying to make a living, and you’re trying to figure out where you’re making your money. Is that a good segue into where you came from?
Philip A. Warner 00:39
Yeah. So Randall, actually, Randall wood is our CEO, and the original idea, founder of scribe count. And so he started publishing in 2007, right after Kindle launched, and he realized, you know, he was going on and checking that clunky Amazon Sales Reporting page and looking at it, like, wow, I’m selling books, and you could go every hour and see what was happening. And then the number of platforms ballooned. And the need for data became very pressing, you had to be agile, you had to be able to make those changes for the two to three week turnaround on books. And it was hours a day, looking at each different reporting page. And we’ve all been there, you’re looking at Barnes and Noble, you’re looking at Cobo, you’re looking at draft a digital, you see a spike and you’re thinking okay, is that Lino? Is that vivli? Oh, is that? Um, and so in order to be adaptable, you have to be getting this data, getting the data is time consuming. It’s error prone, because Who among us hasn’t copied into the wrong column? In Excel? I do it regularly. And so for rental, and I it was, we wanted to use scribe count. And I was he reached out to me, we knew each other as authors and said, Hey, are you interested in helping out with this? and holy crap was I. And so what’s been fantastic about it is you hear about scrub Pat, and you think, oh, that’s, that sounds really useful. And then actually watching it in action is crazy, just being able to, to log in and say, Oh, I had a huge spike on Kobo today, I wonder what that was, or, you know, my urban fantasy series is selling really, really strongly at Apple, I should, I should make some ads, just being able to see that is incredible. And so here, we find ourselves, we brought in someone to do the smart developer part. And we’re just doing the author part in the background,
Mark Lefebvre 02:46
doing the author part. So let’s, um, this is a different way of getting the data to because one of the things I think I was most impressed with, as I was lucky enough to be an early beta user of scribe count is, I didn’t need to give you all my passwords. Oh, my God. revolutionary.
Philip A. Warner 03:06
Yes, we. So speaking of the developers we brought on they were they were very kind they did not, you know, stab us, or, or send a swarm of bees in the mail or anything like that. Because we said to them, Look, we’re working with authors, we’re authors to, they’re going to want to know that we don’t have their data, they’re going to want to know that we don’t have their login information, because their banking and tax information is on these websites, they don’t want someone to know how to get that. So you need to find a way to get this information, while they still have control of all their data. And we don’t have anything sensitive. And so what they managed to do, which we’re incredibly proud of, is basically when you set up scribe count, you show it several doors, you say I’ve got accounts in these places. Here’s where they are and scribe count says, Hey, could you log in and open the door for me? And you do. And then it can send requests, but you can close that door at any time you want. scribe count doesn’t have any control over those links between itself and the, the platform. It just relies on whether or not you’re logged in at the time. So when your computer’s off, it’s not updating. If you decide to sign out if for some reason you decide, I don’t want it to know about my sales at draft to digital I’ve, I want to be secretive. Well, you can unsink it. So
Mark Lefebvre 04:36
yes. Okay, so that’s cool. And so what happens is I go to the I go to the browser, and when I click refresh, I’m just amazed at you know, as a as an author who doesn’t understand the technology, I’m just amazed that I get this beautiful page populated with a whole bunch of custom choices by default. I think it’s this month and then but I have other choices. Like last 30 days, I can do a custom range I can pick a day. Wow. And it’s what not even 30 seconds, it’s probably, you know, five to 10 seconds most maximum, I’m guessing.
Philip A. Warner 05:14
Absolutely. It’s letting the computers do the part that at best, so that then you can do the part that the computers can’t do, which is making sense of that data and writing the books, which, thankfully, the computers can’t do yet.
Mark Lefebvre 05:33
This kind of begs the question I was gonna ask you is, so since you started doing this scribe, count, have you been able to write or have you just been focused on helping other writers at this point?
Philip A. Warner 05:45
Well, I certainly haven’t had as much time to write, but I’m sure you’re familiar as a fellow writer and part time author helper, that the writing sort of comes out on its own time. And so some nights you don’t sleep because the story wanted to be written. And so it’s mostly the story gets its revenge when it can.
06:10
slot everything in.
Mark Lefebvre 06:13
Now, we are going to take some live questions from the awesome audience that we have here. I’m just going to pop up a couple of comments. You can see them as Alyssa did, who did? The best author tools are made by authors? And Dream Team of authors, like she says needs minded minded people and brilliant developers sounds like the ideal.
06:36
Yeah.
06:37
Oh, goodness.
Mark Lefebvre 06:38
So can we I know this is also going to be in an audio feed in our podcast eventually. So I’ll try to describe it. But is it worth you talking through some of the screenshots, they’ll absolutely give some examples. So let me just drop a banner here, so we get a full view. So this is what do you call this this is you’re gonna describe this for our listeners, but we’re gonna pop it up on the screen for viewers. What is the what is the sexy term that you use for this?
Philip A. Warner 07:03
We call this a sunburst. And so you’ll see each platform has its own color. So draft a digital be that lovely purple, you’ve got the orange for Amazon, the pink for Rakuten Kobo. And then you can
07:21
google there, I think a little blue, Google,
Philip A. Warner 07:23
tiny blue. And so you can see when you log in, that you have, you know, X percent coming out of each platform. And that will also show on the side. And then what’s interesting about the sunburst and very useful is that you can click into it.
Mark Lefebvre 07:46
Um, do you want me to show that little video that? Absolutely. Okay, and your walk us through this little bit now I had to do the fake version of this little video of how it looks. So walk us through as we’re watching this, I think I think we’ll be able to hear us as we’re as we’re walking through the different clicks.
Philip A. Warner 08:05
Okay, so there you can see the cursor is hovering over rackets and Kobo, if you were to click on it, it’ll bring all of that data up and just show you that, which means you can also click into each country be clicking on each book. And that way you could see for instance, that evasion might be partly print or audio or ebooks, audio is something we’ll be expanding into. And it allows you to drill down. So if you see a sudden spike in something, you can click into that and say, okay, where’s this spike coming from?
Mark Lefebvre 08:41
Yeah, and it’s so responsive. Like I that was a fake slideshow that I put together for this. But when you click on it, it opens up all of rockets and Kobo. And then you can click on the country and then you know, within a second it shows you that country and over on the right hand side, you’ve got your your totals for the books in that on that platform or the countries it’s it’s a really cool.
Philip A. Warner 09:05
Yeah. And one of the things that I love about it is that up at the top, I can be transitioning over and saying I just want one of my pet names to show because I wrote it into two main pet names, or I can set it and just say I only want the books that I’ve tagged as epic fantasy or urban fantasy, and then it can give me the different breakdown. And one of the things that’s amazing about the sunburst is that if I changed the different tags, I can sometimes see their proportions of different places just shift immediately.
Mark Lefebvre 09:38
And I have to say Amanda just commented, I’ve only ever hovered on the sunburst. I had no idea we could click on them. When making a gesture for you, Amanda,
Philip A. Warner 09:51
we will make more arrows that go to it. Like hey,
Mark Lefebvre 09:54
did you similar to that? I think I had sent I posted hacked to the wind for the wind Facebook group. And I said, Oh my god, this is a way you can you can tag books. So I tagged all my books in this series. And then I use the tag to see all my series. And then I think you or Randall had commented and said, Yeah, it’s a filter on the top, right. But I didn’t even realize I could filter by series, or single title, which was really, really cool.
Philip A. Warner 10:25
If you’re anything like me, also, you’ve got a whole bunch of books that you publish, they were maybe for holiday things. And so I’ve ghosted some of those because they’re not available, like I’m not selling them anymore, or there. And so I have a tag that I think is called just tag tag tag, that is the random other books.
Mark Lefebvre 10:47
Now I want to show a couple other images. So we showed the sunburst, which I’m just popping up on the screen, briefly. And this was when I use the custom filter, and I said, Okay, show me my 2020 sales. And that took, you know, a few seconds to populate that. And then the this I love this is the this map. Below that is the global map that shows me my 2020 sales, that so obviously that they’re highlighted, I think the deeper the blue that you see on the map, the more snails and so you can see your global map, you can see on the right hand side a tally of what the dollars are, I blurred them out. Because I don’t want comparison I just to be happening now. Either people, you know, being jealous of me or other people mocking me. So that’s why I blurred those. But but just to take a look and go Okay, here’s where on all the platforms, so on, on Amazon, on Apple on Barnes noble on Kobo, on Google, for example. These are the main platforms there. These are the places where I’ve sold books in 2020. And then I think the other really cool map is there’s other an ally analytics there. So just high level so I can see royalties versus units. And you can kind of see the differentiator. And obviously the you can see where all the freegans are all the free downloads versus right as a comparison. So you can kind of get a feel like just where did you guys come up with all the ideas for these.
Philip A. Warner 12:17
So what we started with was what we wanted to see what was useful for us. And one of the things is that that everyone sees data slightly differently. And so customizability on the dashboard is our top request. And that’s something that we’re working on so that people can say, you know, what I really don’t do well, with pie charts, I would like to see a bar chart. And then we can do that people can know at a glance, they can log in, and they can say okay, I can see it the way that makes sense to me. I can I can set it, for instance, so that this week, I’m just going to see this one particular book, because I’ve got a book Bub. And so user feedback has been critical for us, for people to log in and say, there’s, in fact already been changes on our dashboard about things that are custom timeframes that people can just do as one click, people were saying, I’d like to see last week I’d like to see. And so we shifted to this month as the default instead of this week as the default. And we brought in the the different total royalties, ebook versus paperback, different different filtering options. And then that’ll continue to change both because you’ll be able to change it in the future for yourself, but also because we’ll be coming up with new things, and we’ll be getting new feedback.
Mark Lefebvre 13:41
So I love that. So I love being able to quickly see like, just by default, I can see my ebook sales versus my print book sales. Yeah. And so I think I’m jumping ahead. There was a question I’m probably gonna just bring up a question early, because I think it’s related to that is okay for pop up a little question. So Amanda, before her mind got blown, and Amanda’s comment is so big, it’s hiding us, you have to peek over that. Good morning from Montreal. Yay, fellow Canadian. Two questions. The first one is Ingram spark of possibilities. And that’s the the print book. And so I’m gonna I’ll bring back her other question later. So does that mean that you’re bringing up other print platforms?
Philip A. Warner 14:21
Absolutely. So we’re going to be doing a couple of things. One is that we’ll be adding a manual expense, an income tap. So if there’s income that, for instance, doesn’t come through a platform at all, if you’re just contract writing or things like that, you can, you can write, for example, exactly. And then if you have income that’s coming through a platform we haven’t added yet, you’ll also be able to manually do that. And we’ll just be bringing in platforms until we run out. So Ingram spark is on there. All of them Smashwords. Some of the apps, we’re looking at It’s I will put them roughly in order of what people are requesting. And
Mark Lefebvre 15:07
okay, so right now, for example, I do have print books with KDP print. I am in the D to D print beta program. I’m lucky I know some people I’ve got into the beta program. And and I do have books with Ingram Spark. So that means very soon right now I’m able to see KDP print and I’m able to see D to D print. But very soon I’ll be able to go Oh, and now here are my Ingram spark Print Titles. Exactly. Wow, that is cool.
Philip A. Warner 15:31
Smashwords was far and away the most requested and grimmer Spark. A lot of them are pretty much tried after that. Ingram Spark. We had a lot of requests for find away and audible, obviously, audiobooks are coming out worse. Yeah,
Mark Lefebvre 15:43
that’s really getting so amazing. Wow, that’s gonna be really, really cool. Cuz, yeah, I mean, I’ve had to take all these separate spreadsheets, and compare them and then and then I would take my traditionally published income, and then my other mixed revenue, which is kind of all over the place, and then put them all together and go, Okay, now I know what I did. Because that view I had of 2020 is right now, just ebook and print through draft to digital and, and, exactly. Okay, well, so I guess the next question I was going to have, because it is, I’m asking this because I’m selfish. And I get to ask you. So I do publish to Apple and to Barnes and Noble as two of the Big Five retailers, I published through a draft to digital and my map when you when you look at it, and I’ll just pop it up really briefly so we can kind of see it. So when I look at it like okay, so there’s Amazon. And there’s Kobo, and there’s Google, which is actually growing really nicely this year, which you can’t quite see the little white sliver there. And then draft a digital is really not just drafted digital, but it’s, for me, it is mostly apple and Barnes and Noble than a whole bunch of other places. But it is even because of the payment splitting. And I have more and more projects where I’m publishing to everywhere through drafted digital, so I will have Amazon sales and Kobo sales and apple and Barnes noble is one of the things I was hoping to be able to see it. I mean, I, you know, I love drafter digital, I’m a little partial, wonderful company, but I don’t really care that it’s drafted digital, I care about the retailer, because I want to know how the retailer’s performing, it doesn’t matter how I got to the retailer. Yep. Oh, that’s what I’m curious about.
Philip A. Warner 17:30
Yes. And that is, that is also a top request and will be relevant also, of course, with Smashwords. So we will be able to filter out and see, you know, you’re getting your draft to digital sales via Apple via Barnes and Noble. And this will be one of the things that we’ll likely release one version of to start with. And then as people give feedback, we’ll be looking at making it adaptable. So for instance, when you log in, if you publish to multiple sources, it’s, I’m sorry, I’m getting a slight echo. You’ll have the choice of whether or not you want it to come in as draft to digital first and then segmented by retailer, or do you want by retailer with a slight indication that part of that is drafted digital? So that’s the question. Yeah. And I think that’s one of those things that it simply is adaptable by author. But not every author is going to want that the same way. And so that’s what we’re in the business of is giving people data. It only makes sense that we’re adaptable to how they get that.
Mark Lefebvre 18:44
Yeah, cuz for example, like I do, I do have titles in Smashwords, as well. And so some of the titles like I’m using, you know, Kobo directly, I’m using Kobo through Smashwords. You drafted. And so there’s all these weird combinations of stuff. And I guess every author has their own weird dog’s breakfast, if published, right?
Philip A. Warner 19:04
Yes. Yeah. And of course, then there’s also the question of, how do we show once we’ve got 45 platforms that we’re looking at? We want to make it so that it’s not just a dizzying array? And you look on and I mean, how can you really tell if 1/45 of the sunburst is slightly larger than it used to be? And so there will be options to make that more visually accessible, there will be a you know, if you’re under 5% of total sales, you you filter into the other category or so,
Mark Lefebvre 19:37
yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So that is, that is quite amazing. I think the customized customizability and the flexibility is awesome, but, you know, something we haven’t touched on is, this must cost for a beginning author, if I’m just starting out and I’ve only got like, you know, maybe I’ve sold five books and all of 2020 and, I mean, I’ve got to pay at least $100 A month for the cert this quick survey sold
Philip A. Warner 20:01
two books in my first year. And one of them was to me
20:07
just to make sure
Philip A. Warner 20:08
if you’re selling five bucks in your first year Oh,
Mark Lefebvre 20:12
so but but I mean, so beginning author, they don’t have a lot of sales, but they run an analysis tool to help them build their sales. I think there isn’t a chicken egg issue here. Because I think your payment structure I’d love you to tell us about how, how much how many 1000s of dollars, is this going to cost me? That sounds like an infomercial, doesn’t it? Well,
Philip A. Warner 20:35
we’re happy to announce for April 1 that there is a special tier for one of the founding team will stand behind you. And every time a sale comes in, we’ll go on the shoulder. So that is a little bit more expensive.
Mark Lefebvre 20:52
Apply to be one of the people I would like to do that. Absolutely.
Philip A. Warner 20:55
Absolutely. And we can be you know, we can ring a bell, you know, it’s really we want to be customer focused on this. So okay, whatever sound effect works for you require change every time
Mark Lefebvre 21:05
a bell rings, and often got a sale. Oh, sorry. But how much? Let’s say let’s say I’m only bringing in $100 a month? How much is this gonna cost me isn’t?
Philip A. Warner 21:21
Nothing? what it will cost you nothing? Until you’re making over $500 a month. So we’ve already made the offers.
Mark Lefebvre 21:32
Wow, no, no, seriously. So So if I’m not making $500 a month, I can go in there, I can check it out. I can use all the tools for free
Philip A. Warner 21:39
all the features, all those features.
Mark Lefebvre 21:41
And hopefully it helps me get to about $500 a month. So
Philip A. Warner 21:44
Exactly. You know, that is part of our hope is we in the indie author community, I found people are so helpful. Randall and I have both been the beneficiaries of so much advice, so much guidance and mentorship. And so I think every indie author is saying to the baby authors don’t make the mistakes I made. Here, I’ll make this easier for you. Right. And so we want to provide this to the new authors. And say you’re coming back after a big hiatus, which is something that I actually did quite recently, and had to sort of start revitalizing my backlist, you really need that data. But if you’re bringing in $100 a month, $200 a month paying for an extra tool is really not something that you can afford, or that you should have to do. And so as you grow through the tiers, so 500 to $1,000, you’ll be paying $15 a month 1000 to 5000 to $20 a month and 5000 and up is 25. But when you’re just starting out, or you’re getting back into things, you’ll be able to use all of the features, it doesn’t matter which payment to your you’re in. And that will change. It’ll be based on the data from two months prior. So if you sign up anytime in April, it’ll be the data from February, that data is concrete, it means we know that all of the returns have been counted and all of that. And so it’ll you’ll be paying based on that month, and then that will roll forward. And it goes up and down. So if you made $5,000 in one month, and then the next month, I don’t know Amazon went offline and draft to digital crashed and all you have to Lino and you know, you
Mark Lefebvre 23:38
just wanted a break. You want to start making money?
Philip A. Warner 23:41
Yeah, you’re just like, I don’t know, I don’t think I’d do this anymore. Yeah, I’ll be we’ll make it up.
Mark Lefebvre 23:47
Wow. And that actually kind of leads to a question. So I think it was one of Amanda’s other questions. I’m gonna pop it up on the screen for a second. And I think it was is there any way we can have reports on returns, like when they happen on which book from where? And I have to say thank you so much for scribe code. She says, I love it.
Philip A. Warner 24:05
Oh, thank you. We are glad you are enjoying that. And yes, two prongs. So returns and then also pre orders are things that we’re looking at because those are orders. Yeah.
Mark Lefebvre 24:18
Pre orders more than I like returns.
Philip A. Warner 24:20
I also like pre orders more than I like returns, but but yes, we will be. We’ll be working on that and bring that in.
Mark Lefebvre 24:28
Awesome. Cool. I’m gonna bring up a few more comments just because I think they’re worthwhile. Susie O’Connell says loving strikeouts so far. And the dean said I didn’t know about Nadine, you and me both. I didn’t know what was that little filter thing. It looks like a little funnel like oil thing for your car.
Philip A. Warner 24:50
Cuz I managed to miss that you could just filter by pen name. And so I had tagged all my books by pen name. And then like, I
Mark Lefebvre 24:59
did the sampling I did. Amanda says it’s great for figuring out read through because well, how does that how does read through how do you figure out read through using scribe count?
Philip A. Warner 25:11
Yes. So what you’ll be looking at is you can look at your series, and just look to say, Okay, so here is I’ll use my light and shadow series, I bring that one up, and I can see how many for me, it’s first in series free, this shout out born. So I would look at how many are going are being sold with shadow born, scroll down to the bottom where it shows total royalties, total sales, and I can see across different platforms. And then if I click into different platforms, I can see different read through. So there was a recent post that was made by Aaron right over at wired for the win, where she talked about the fact that Hi, Aaron, where she talked about the fact that her read through and the amount of paid books that she’s moving compared to free books is vastly different at different retailers. And so that is another thing to watch. And it’s something that’s very good to see.
26:13
Love that. Oh, that is really, really cool.
Mark Lefebvre 26:17
So yeah, I love that analytics, because that is really going to help authors with getting getting to that to the next point.
Philip A. Warner 26:25
Yep. All right, yes. And we will also be looking at measures of responsivity to advertising as well as velocity of books to say, hey, you had a promo on this book you marked down. It really doesn’t look like it budged. Versus you had a promo on this book. And boy, how they did it just go through the roof. So
Mark Lefebvre 26:46
that is really, really cool. posting a comment from Sasha, who says, I’m going everywhere. Aaron, Aaron does say hello, back to you. There you go. So I got that. Nadine says, it’s so worthy. I’m, I’m an accountant by day job. And that gives me all the data I need. I guess that’s a good thing to hear. Right from a cast endorsement.
27:08
Yes.
Mark Lefebvre 27:12
Nadine returned to scribe count if you’re looking to give them a testimonial. So what are some of the and again, any any questions that people have? Just drop them in the comments, I can ask. I can ask those questions. What are some of the questions that have caught you off guard so far? Because I know, you know, I’ve been sort of pestering you with Oh, can you? How can I have this? Is there anything that caught you by surprise?
Philip A. Warner 27:37
Um, I’m sorting back through questions. Most of them have been variations. There were a surprising number of people who have multiple accounts, at different Okay, at different retailers. So like you’ve got a publishing house versus you’ve got your own books under your own tax ID. And so that’s a huge puzzle for the development team. How are you pulling data in multiple places at once? That was surprising. Other than that, it’s mostly been just variations on the theme. Randall and I had the first surprise comment for our development team, which was we started working on merging books, and immediately merged the wrong books. And it turns out that D merge is way more difficult to program than just merging books in the first place. So we were merged. Okay, so merge books is at different retailers, you might put the title slightly differently, or they might display the title slightly differently. Which means that as we’re pulling in the data, those appear to be two different books describe count. It’s computer it doesn’t, it doesn’t realize that shadow born with a little colon after it is completely different from right.
Mark Lefebvre 29:01
Like maybe you have a real isbm on some platforms, and an asi n and the Kobo and, and all those things.
Philip A. Warner 29:09
And some so for instance, Barnes and Noble, I think is the one that doesn’t really show subtitles. And so if you want the subtitle, you put it in the title field and, and then start counting. So it’s two different books. So you go and you on the bookshelf tab, which is three down, there’s a little manage books drop down, and merge books is one of the options. So you can merge all of the different versions of the book and just see, okay, how’s this one book doing across all the different platforms. Um, and if you’re like me, you will probably misclick at some point. So be very careful. So our development team is very kindly working on a D merge option, which they’ve described to us as making soup. So if you’re making soup, you dump all of the carrots into the pot and then if You’re trying to de merge, you’re trying to like fish all of the carrots back out again, which is the funnest, but harder,
Mark Lefebvre 30:06
and you’re trying to get the flavor of the carrots out of the suitcase.
Philip A. Warner 30:09
Yeah, exactly. That’s the whole,
Mark Lefebvre 30:11
because it’s so hot. They’ve started to melt.
Philip A. Warner 30:14
Yes. So for now, be very careful when merging don’t make mistakes. Oh, man. Wow.
Mark Lefebvre 30:20
So the other thing you talked about earlier, just to explain it, so you’ve ghosted the book. Now, that’s not that you stopped texting to go to the back, right? When it’s like, Hey, what happened? I
30:28
thought we were gonna finish me.
Mark Lefebvre 30:33
But what is what is ghosting a book.
Philip A. Warner 30:36
So ghosting is maybe there’s a book that you don’t want to see anymore, or you, you had a pen name back in the day, and every once in a while it puts through some sales, but you don’t really care about it. Or it’s just something that you don’t want to see come up on your main, your main feed, you can under the Manage books, thing, ghosts, that book, it’ll still show up on your bookshelf, but in all of your analytics, it won’t show. So if you were to download your CSV file of you know, the past three months, it wouldn’t be there.
Mark Lefebvre 31:10
Oh, kitten eat. So it’s just so you can kind of ignore it just like ghosting somebody in real life. Exactly.
31:16
Number, you know, we’re not.
Mark Lefebvre 31:21
So I guess I guess the question I have from from I mentioned, I do a lot of collaborative projects, through drafted Digital’s payments planning, which is very convenient, because then I don’t have to worry about taking money and giving money away. DDD does it all for me. So when I’m looking at payment, split titles right now, I’m just seeing the am I actually seeing this is a question. I’m not sure. Am I actually seeing the dollars I’m making? Or am I seeing the dollars the book is making? Just as
Philip A. Warner 31:49
dollars, you’re making
Mark Lefebvre 31:52
a demo account? And then if, Okay, interesting. Yep.
Philip A. Warner 31:58
And one of the things that we’re looking at for the future is people being able to give permissions much the way D to D does, for sharing a series to say, Hey, I’m tagged on this series. And my royalty split is 30% of the revenues. And both people will agree on, you know what those terms are, and then it will show the data. So it It shows that coming in and say you co author a book with someone, you aren’t able to publish it through a platform that has a royalty split auto made for you. It’s still going to show you just what your share is for that
Mark Lefebvre 32:38
month. That is really, really cool. Because that’s the thing you’re tracking. You’re like, okay, exactly what the retailer, that’s what DVD is telling you.
Philip A. Warner 32:46
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, obviously, it’ll make sense to have a certain view, if you’re publishing multiple books with multiple people, you may want to look at what your whole revenue will be for that month. But then you can also switch over and say, Okay, this is my share of what’s coming in.
Mark Lefebvre 33:01
Wow. So I want to get to a little bit more technical stuff. So it’s browser based. Are there certain browsers like if I’m using Netscape browser, is that a good browser to use for this? Or it’s never
Philip A. Warner 33:18
My apologies. So Netscape.
Mark Lefebvre 33:20
loved them. They were good ones.
33:23
Once.
Philip A. Warner 33:26
So right now we’ve got Firefox, we’ve got Chrome. We’ve got Internet Explorer, Safari. Those who use Apple products, no Apple tends to sort of march to the beat of their own drum, which can be immensely useful. It can also be very difficult when you’re trying to do things like browser extensions. So we’re still fine tuning the safari extension that will be there soon.
Mark Lefebvre 33:48
Or you’ve preempted Mary’s question on
Philip A. Warner 33:53
a specific eta marry I am so sorry, but it will be soon. So okay.
Mark Lefebvre 33:59
Hang tight. The main the main browsers, right, the main ones still okay, that’s really really cool. And yeah, now the question is, does Netscape actually still exist? Aaron asks,
34:09
no.
Mark Lefebvre 34:11
I don’t know. I go to I go to my space from it all the time. So we do have we do have room for questions from from the live studio audience from around the world, including, at least at least two Canadians in here with me that I saw that was it Canadians for the when Amanda said because Nadine apparently is also from Montreal. There we go. So so I’m gonna while we’re waiting for other questions, and I am actually going to ask you so what do you what are you working on now?
34:48
What are you writing right now?
Philip A. Warner 34:49
I writing right now. I am writing in epic fantasy series. That is I mean, it’s it’s got all of the different Things I like, it’s got the magic, it’s got the demonic invasion, it’s got all of that stuff. But it also has, I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of watching a movie or reading a book and something goes horribly wrong, and the character just sort of shimmies up a wall or lies their way out of out of capture glibly anything, God, I would be so dead. If that were me, I wouldn’t be so bad at all of that. And so a lot of the characters in the book are characters who were not trained for the situations in which they find themselves and are just okay, I don’t now would definitely be the time to like hack and slash my way out of this group. But I have never handled a sword in my life. I have an immensely fun to write. And all of that will be coming out next year.
Mark Lefebvre 35:45
So Oh, that was awesome. And so I’m glad to hear that you actually have time, obviously, now that you’ve helped build this tool. And then you can get some more analytics. And then you know, what’s working in what countries and what platforms right?
Philip A. Warner 35:58
Yeah, and that’ll definitely be me. Me sending huge shipments of coffee beans, the developer saying can you get pre orders working? Can you?
Mark Lefebvre 36:08
Yeah, that would be so cool. Because I mean, I’ve already seen some some pre orders on some series, books that I’ve been pushing. And I’m pretty thrilled like, yeah, I guess I should write that book now. Now that there’s much of pre orders for it, right?
Philip A. Warner 36:21
The indie world.
Mark Lefebvre 36:23
I have this very, very important question that we have to answer from Susie. It says that my stepdad was raised in British Columbia. Does that count count? Curiously, it does count. Okay, so she’s vicariously Canadian. Welcome. Susie. We have some protein and maple syrup for you. So, okay,
Philip A. Warner 36:40
I think Minnesota does that count.
Mark Lefebvre 36:46
So this I think this is a comment from Zara same please wait while we process your information is that a is taking a very long time is that
Philip A. Warner 36:56
I could I have slightly more info? I don’t know if your
Mark Lefebvre 36:59
Oh, Jeff is slightly more information, if not. People, what? Where can they email alert questions?
Philip A. Warner 37:07
Yes, absolutely. So they can email support at scribe count calm, okay, or there is a little blue support button in the bottom right hand corner that has a tiny question mark. You can also click on that and it will send things directly through to us. The support at scrub camp.com email goes to the exact same place. So Zahra, if you’re still watching, if you can send in slightly more information as to which screen you’re on, is this your first doing setup or your first doing, let me know, sometimes it can take a few sinks. Each of them are about 15 minutes. So if you’re you first logged in, and you’re trying to pull data, for instance, back to 2007, it may take a few of those 15 minutes syncs to get everything pulled in.
Mark Lefebvre 37:54
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay,
Philip A. Warner 37:55
um, because Amazon looks at this person knocking at the door who’s coming in, but like, Hello, could I have all of your information please? Like, okay, really?
Mark Lefebvre 38:09
Excellent. Excellent. Well, that’s, that’s really, really cool. And this is a question that Dean brings up that I think is kind of pertinent. So I think talking about pre orders, which you can’t see through your Kobo writing life. What does that mean? If If you can’t see it through Kobo writing life dashboard, that means Does that mean you probably can’t get it?
Philip A. Warner 38:27
Yeah, we have. So each platform does things slightly differently. And Kobo brings to mind another issue, which is that you can see free data on Kobo for that month, but you can’t see it in the reports, which means that the way scrub count works is once a month is closed, we pull directly from the sales reports. And so people’s free units on Kobo disappear. People say, I know I had them, where did they go? And the thing is, well, they’re invisible on Kobo now. So pre orders will have to find a way to get them and that will be slightly different for every platform. So we’ll be usually we try to work directly with platforms on that to say, hey, for instance, we’re working directly with draft a digital together power breakdown. Who knows who knows, there are some people there that you can get in contact with.
Mark Lefebvre 39:25
Okay. Let me just so this was a Zara was confirming when you set up and thank you,
Philip A. Warner 39:33
okay. Let us know if it starts to work during this if not email support@scribd.com. And
Mark Lefebvre 39:39
I will bring that up again. There it is support at scribe Comm.
Philip A. Warner 39:44
Really, it’s it’s starting to come through now and you’re seeing
Mark Lefebvre 39:47
Okay, and then oh, Randall Randall is offering his suggestion. He’s saying if you’re talking about picking the default date range, Oh, hang on. No, this is he’s answering the question that I was gonna ask you. So Aaron asks of Right now it decides that’s going to show me daily my play. Can I control that like I can to set a default that says, when I log on, I only care about, you know, my default? Is this not 30 days not.
Philip A. Warner 40:13
Yeah, you will be able to set that that’s not on. It’s on deck. It is not deployed yet.
Mark Lefebvre 40:20
So that’s what Randall was in answering as the car is like, No, he’s answering a question from from the field. As a tag team, right, he’s answering the text questions. Okay, cool. Okay, so Lois asks, this is my question. What about breaking out Apple on BNN within DDD and Global Diversity?
Philip A. Warner 40:44
I’ll get to Global Diversity in a moment. Yes, we will be breaking out apple and BNN. for Global Diversity, slightly more information. Are you talking about publishing platforms in say, China or India or things like that? Or tulino? Or?
Mark Lefebvre 40:59
If so, we are absolutely looking at those. And it’s by request, right. So it’s by popularity. So the more authors that are requesting it, the more likely you’re going to
Philip A. Warner 41:09
Yes. So if you have a request, absolutely email us to let us know. We’ll also be seeking out different platforms to make sure that, you know, if there’s a platform out there, even if no one has requested it, we can we can provide it. Because if it’s out there, if it’s generating a lot of data, someone probably wants it even if they have any us.
Mark Lefebvre 41:30
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. And it’s there when you show up, which is kind of handy. Yeah. So I good news again, randles. just sharing in the comments that Safari for May. Yeah, May. That is awesome. Yeah. I just just about broke into a Joan Jett and the blackhearts song. So
Philip A. Warner 41:51
my head school January. So I was like, oh, man, and then I realized, Oh, no, it’s April now.
Mark Lefebvre 41:56
So DVD data comes in as Oh, yeah. All that’s what she’s talking about. So DVD is us because it’s US company or other not as Can I see where most of my Kobo sales would probably be right, that kind of thing. I see.
42:11
Yeah,
Mark Lefebvre 42:12
that’s what you have to work with a good folks at D to D to see if you can get I imagine.
Philip A. Warner 42:17
Yeah, here their team is good. So we should
Mark Lefebvre 42:20
mark people, some of them are bald. Good. You know, we have about three minutes left, if there’s any other questions from the live awesome studio audience? And if not, I’m gonna probably ask another question of my own. Did you have any questions because I thought, hey, why am I putting you on the spot the whole time? I’m happy to answer any of your questions.
Philip A. Warner 42:49
Yes. Is there like a special tag I can put on my books to just hit number one on day to day every time are? Like a little crack code that?
Mark Lefebvre 42:59
We don’t tell anyone? Because that would make me way too easy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Oh, yeah. Can’t the live the live awesome studio? posting screenshots. All screenshots would be so nice. Unfortunately, that’s not a feature, I’m afraid sorry. So I’ll have to talk to stream yard about that. But they are not our guest this week. Our guest this week was was Philip Warner from scribe Comm. Philpott, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Thank you to the awesome live studio audience for asking some great questions. So people can find out about scribe count, where can they find
43:39
out calm
Mark Lefebvre 43:41
spread count.com. So it’s kind of like this email address but without the support at Yeah, that’s because I had to Jerry like. So I just want to remind folks that we do these semi regularly these draft to digital self publishing insiders. If you want to be notified when you go to your dashboard, draft to digital dashboard, you’ll see upcoming shows posted in a banner on the top left. You can watch these live on Facebook on YouTube. While you’re there, follow us on Facebook, follow us. subscribe and click that little bell to be notified when we post new videos. Because not only do we post these new videos to YouTube, but the lovely Kevin Tumlinson, my colleague who has the lovely beautiful voice does lots of great walkthrough videos and explains all kinds of really cool snazzy things that you can use with draft to digital. And yeah, of course. So there’s a scribe count calm Allah says just posting, posting from from there’s one and drafted digital too. They’re cool people. I like them. So cool. Oh, I guess one quick last question. Will there be potentially for affiliate or partner?
Philip A. Warner 44:51
Yes, we’ll be rolling out an affiliate program for all users. And stay tuned because that will be out shortly.
Mark Lefebvre 44:58
Awesome. Well, Phil Thank you so much for hanging out with me today in studio audience and happy writing to everyone out there and universe and happy data analytics while you’re doing that.
Philip A. Warner 45:11
It’s not as scary as you think. You will make it pretty. Very, very pretty, right?
45:15
Okay, cool.
45:17
Thanks, everyone.
Mark Lefebvre 45:18
Take care of
Philip A. Warner 45:19
everyone.