When self-publishing a book on Amazon KDP, it’s normal to want to learn everything you can about analytics.
How many people have checked out your book, and how many have downloaded and read it? Did anyone DNF?
Amazon KDP does offer analytics for you to monitor, but sometimes you need more.
Google Analytics is one of the best tracking tools on the market – but can you use it to keep tabs on your book published on Amazon? Let’s find out.
Google Analytics – What Is It?
If you’ve been on the internet for any length of time, you’ll have most likely heard of Google Analytics.
It is a web analytics tool that most people use to keep tabs on how their websites are doing in terms of traffic, visitor insights, income, and more.
It is invaluable when it comes to marketing and SEO purposes. It can help people keep track of what marketing efforts and working and what aren’t so that they can adjust the plan accordingly.
Many people have had insurmountable success using Google Analytics, and we highly recommend it to anyone in the online marketing space. Plus, it’s free!
How Tracking Your Book’s Analytics Can Help You
We’ve all been there – we’ve self-published a book on Amazon KDP and expected it to hit the top charts within minutes. Our books are the best ever written, right?
So why wouldn’t they be snapped up by everyone who reads the description?
Many people who get into self-publishing underestimate the marketing efforts that they are signing themselves up for.
Seriously, you’re going to need to get a solid marketing plan in place for yourself before your book even goes live.
But the problem is that most self-published authors don’t have that much experience in the world of marketing. How are you going to get your name out there – where can you find your target audience?
This is where analytics can help you.
Being able to track your marketing efforts by how much traffic or downloads your book is getting from them is a great way to determine where your core audience is and how you can reach them.
Analytics also tells you other useful information, such as ratings, percentages read, and more.
Can You Embed A Google Analytics Code In Your EBook?
When you upload a book to Amazon KDP, you can add codes and files to it to better format and publish the book.
With the option to add a code to your eBook, you could add a Google Analytics code here to keep track of your book – right?
Wrong. If you try to do this, your book will come back rejected as Amazon will refuse to format it.
We tested this theory with one of our short stories. It was about 20 pages long and uploaded to KDP just fine.
However, when we uploaded it again with the Google Analytics code attached, there was no changing Amazon’s mind that this was a book unable to be formatted.
Despite it being successfully formatted without the code.
We attempted to get the code in there a few more ways, but Amazon was too smart for us each and every time. So, we gave up.
Funnily enough, the original short story was accepted by Amazon’s reviewing team and is still available today. However, we had to settle for Amazon’s analytics to monitor its activity.
How Else Can You Track Your Book?
The best way to keep track of your book is through Amazon’s own KDP Reports. This is a dashboard available for all authors that shows you your royalties, sales, and pages read.
This is an interesting feature that shows you all you need to know about your book and how it’s being received by the public.
There are so many features to explore on KDP reports, which we will show you now.
Everything You Need To Know About KDP Reports
Dashboard
The sales dashboard is the first page you open on KDP reports, and it will show you the top earning books, your estimated royalties amount, total orders, the total number of Kindle pages read, and your top formats, and marketplaces for the month.
The dashboard updates itself every 15 minutes so you won’t have to worry about inaccurate information.
Bear in mind that while eBook orders will show up once the order is placed, paperback books will show up on the dashboard after they have been shipped.
Orders And Pre-Orders
This is simply the number of orders for your book that have been processed.
EBooks will be processed as soon as the payment has been confirmed through Amazon, while paperbacks and other print books will be processed once they’ve been shipped.
Here you can compare up to 10 of your books at a time.
Units can also be ordered for pre-orders, and this report will include plenty of information about the time leading up to the official release date of your book.
KENP Read
Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) is the number of pages that have been read from your books through Amazon Kindle products.
This is how the royalties you earn from Kindle Unlimited are calculated.
You’ll get a certain amount of royalties depending on how many pages of your book were read. So, keeping track of this number is vital in determining the number of royalties you’ll get from KU.
Here you can compare up to 10 books at a time.
Promotions
There are plenty of promotions and deals that you can add to your KDP books. Here you’ll see how each has performed, and you can filter these by titles, marketplace, promotion status, and more.
This can tell you how each promotion is working and whether or not it’s worth participating in again.
Month-To-Date
This is a monthly breakdown of your book sales and transactions. It can be incredibly useful to track external marketing efforts.
For example, if you marketed primarily on TikTok one month and YouTube the next, you could determine whether one social media platform was more effective than the other.
Royalties
This is the estimated total of royalties you have earned from eBook, paperback, and hardcover sales in a timeframe. You’ll also be able to see your royalties earned from Kindle Unlimited.
Since this estimate will be shown before the KDP Select Global Fund is announced, the KU royalties won’t be accurate to your actual earnings.
This is why these royalties are shown separately from the actual sales of your books.
Payments
Here is where you can keep track of your previous payment history so that you can keep track of how each month is faring. Again, this can be a great way to keep track of your marketing efforts.
Summary
Thanks for reading! We hope that this article has helped you understand how to keep track of your book’s analytics.
While Google Analytics is not a usable tool for KDP-published books, Amazon Reports is a decent alternative.
You can learn all about your payments, royalties, orders, promotions, and more within Amazon Reports.
This is bound to help you market your book more effectively and learn what works and what doesn’t. Good luck!