Review sales, royalties, and rights
Check the BookScan report
Once the book is on sale, Amazon Author Central shows a free weekly report of print copies sold as reported by BookScan; read it as a trend and keep the royalty statement as the number that counts.
Why it matters
Between launch and the first royalty statement, which can be six months or more away, the BookScan report is the only regular sales signal most authors have. It turns guesses about what is working into something you can see, and it stops the two common mistakes: panicking over a slow week that was never going to be busy, and assuming a campaign worked because it felt busy.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author. The author reads it; the publisher has its own subscription
- When
- From launch week on, then after each review, event, or campaign (Review sales, royalties, and rights: after publication, then at every reporting period)Checked September 14, 2026 (opens in a new tab)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
BookScan is a paid sales-tracking service (run by Circana, formerly NPD) that publishers subscribe to. It counts print copies sold in the United States through the retailers that report to it, which covers most bookstore and online print sales but not every channel: direct sales, many special sales, library purchases, and ebooks are outside it.
Authors get a free window into it through Amazon Author Central. Once your author page is claimed and the book is on sale, the BookScan weekly sales report shows copies sold of your bestselling books for the period you select, by week and by region. There is nothing to set up beyond the claim.
Read it as a trend. A review in a trade outlet, a podcast, an event, or a promotion should show up as a bump in the following week or two; a flat line tells you what did not move the needle. The absolute number will always be lower than what you eventually sell, because of the channels BookScan cannot see, and it will never match your royalty statement, which counts every sale the publisher was paid for, minus returns, on the publisher's schedule.
The route is the same whichever way you publish: the author page belongs to the author, and the report comes with it. A traditionally published author can also ask the publisher for its own BookScan view, which covers the same data with more detail.
Where it is. Sign in at author.amazon.com (opens in a new tab), open Reports + Marketing in the top menu, and choose BookScan. Pick the period above the chart (the last four weeks is the default) and the region beside it. If the section is empty, one of three things is true: the book has no print sales reported yet, the edition is not yet linked to your author page (add it under Books), or the book is ebook-only, which BookScan does not count.
Common mistakes
- Treating the BookScan number as total sales, then feeling cheated by a royalty statement that differs.
- Expecting ebook or library sales to appear; they are outside BookScan.
- Checking daily and reading noise as news.
- Never opening it, and learning six months later that nothing moved the book.
Identifiers for Check the BookScan report
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All author identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Author Central The free Amazon page where you claim your author name, attach every edition of your books, and write your biography. | Unclaimed, the author page a reader sees is whatever Amazon assembled, and any edition listed under a different spelling of your name sits apart from the rest of your work. Only you can fix that: a publisher cannot claim your author page for you, and the platform account a self-publisher publishes through is a separate login, so the job is identical on all three routes. Amazon's help says author pages are not removed once created, so use exactly the name that appears on your books rather than creating a second page you would rather not have. You're done when one author page carries the right name and every edition and format is attached to it. | Add your Amazon author page link |
What done looks like
- The author page claimed, so the report is available.
- The report checked in the weeks after launch and after each review, event, or campaign.
- A note of the weekly numbers beside the dates of what you did, so cause and effect are visible.
- No decision made on the absolute number alone; the royalty statement stays the record of what sold.
- You can find the report without hunting: Reports + Marketing, then BookScan.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- Official source (opens in a new tab)
- Last checked
- September 14, 2026
- How confident we are
- Verified
Rules and deadlines change. We last checked this information on September 14, 2026. If you see something that needs updating, please tell us.