DARREN COPE

Here’s the third part of the series (read Part I and Part II now if you are just joining us…)

As of December 27, I am now seeing ‘reports’ in my Google Books Partner Program interface.  However, these reports are from one week prior, and every day I get one new result from the previous week.  This seems odd in the world of instant updates and live tracking.  I hope it’s just an initial ‘startup’ glitch, and that I will get to see live (or at least close to live) reports as my book is in the system longer.

As before, a quick recap of my questions follows.  Since I only have two days of report data, most of these questions remain unanswered, and likely will until I gather some significant data in the next few months.  Here’s a recap of my questions, including one new one:

• How long will the “Processing” step take? – 13 days in my case
• Now that the book is live, how much time does it take for the Reporting tools to become active and usable? – 8 days.  However, I am still only getting results that are a week old
• Once the book is “Live,” how much traffic will I get from it? (views, page reads, etc.)
• How many folks will click through to the “Buy Link”?
• How many of those folks will actually buy a copy of the book?
• If these Google Books traffic numbers are significant, can I (and how?) then add the book to the Google eBook store?  I have read that an “Editions” tab will show up in my Partner Program page, where I can add it to the eBook Store.  I’ll keep you posted on this one!  If I decided to do this, I will likely have to stop selling through RBR.
• How is the ad ‘revenue sharing’ linked to Google AdSense?
• What are the limitations to a non-U.S. Google Books account?
• How is the ‘viewable’ percentage calculated?
• Why don’t I have an “Editions” tab to add the book to the Google eBook Program (should I decide to do so)?
  • is this related to the limitations of a non-U.S. Account?
• Will I ever get ‘live’ results, or will they always be a week old?