Category Archives: News

DVD Tracking and Music Tracking Services Launched

DVD Sales Tracker.com can track DVD and Blu-Ray format discs.

Music Sales Tracker.com can track music and albums such as:
Audio CDs and MP3 Downloads.

After completing some major improvements to the core of NovelRank over the weekend, these sister sites were launched to meet the needs of their particular audiences. These are paired down versions of NovelRank, in that there is no blog, no social network accounts, and no donation requests. Both sister sites are as feature rich as NovelRank in the sense of individual item tracking, easy access, free to use, and including the User Pages feature to track multiple items. However, moving forward, updates and new features may not be sent to these sister websites while I concentrate on continuing to make NovelRank even better for you, the authors.

As a final improvement, if someone on NovelRank attempts to add a video or music item, they will be automatically brought to the tracking page of the appropriate sister site. Neat trick, huh? I hope this will help filter each type of creative individual to the appropriate site for their needs.

Become a NovelRank Featured Book for 2010!

Wishing Well Coin Game
Think about the last time you went to dinner with good friends you had not seen in a while. You laughed, ate some great food, and had even better conversation. You decided to pick up the tab for the whole table not because you owed it to them, but because you were feeling generous for the great memories your friends were creating for you.

In the past few months, donations for NovelRank have slowed to a trickle while I continue to add new features based on user feedback, continuing to make NovelRank the best resource for tracking of Amazon sales for yourself or on behalf of other authors. The current rate for my time is $1.20/hour (based on all previous donations). With that in mind, I’m running the only donation drive of 2010, because I need your support to continue to bring you the best features and benefits.

Of course, I’m happy to give something more in return, so here is what you can receive by donating: A coveted Featured Book spot on NovelRank, one of only 9 spots! Combined over the last 8 months, the 9 books featured on the Track, FAQ, Publisher, Top 10, and Login have received just under 100,000 page views! The Track page accounts for 82,000 of those views in the last 8 months.

Donate $250 or more – You may choose 3 books to be rotated on the Track page & all other pages
Donate $100-$249 – You may choose 1 book to be rotated on the Track page or 3 books on the other pages
Donate $30-$99 – You may have 1 book rotated through the FAQ, Publisher, Top 10, and Login pages

Any donations above $10 will receive a personally written thank you card. After donating, you can either email me or you will receive an email shortly after the donation asking you which book(s) will be included.

Thanks for contributing to this community supported website. All Featured Books will stay up through the end of 2010, at least. The amount of page views received is not a fixed amount, but is dependent on the number of qualified donations and thus the number of books in rotation.

Cheers,
Mario Lurig
Creator, NovelRank.com

Photo courtesy of kanjiroushi – Creative Commons (Attribution)

Book Sales Rank Tracking Improved on User Pages

Following 5 steps to get anything done stinks! Thanks to feedback from a user (Gordon), there are some improvements for those who are using the User Accounts feature to track book sales rank.

Now, once you Login to your User Account to manage the books on your User Page, a cookie is set in your browser that will follow you as you move around NovelRank. If you then go over to the Sales Rank Tracking page and add a new book to NovelRank, the book will be automatically added to your User Page! Go ahead, applause is appropriate.

This takes a previously 5 step process for each book down to 1 step: start tracking the book.

As a reminder, you must go to the User Accounts Admin page first to get the cookie before this will work, and if you add books from a different computer or browser, it will not happen automatically, so it is 95% effective; A dramatic improvement over 0%.

Amazon Book Review Count Now Available

A new feature has been added to NovelRank: Review Count. Now, NovelRank has always actually stored this information, but unlike Sales Rank which is updated hourly, NovelRank never had a system in place to update the total number of reviews for each book. That… is history.

The system will now check, approximately once per month, for 2 things:

A change in Review Count
A missing or new book image

NovelRank will then update automatically with the new information about the book image or review count and update the book’s info, available on the book details page as well as the User Pages. Please be patient; At current levels, it will take approximately 23 days before every book has been checked at least once! Thanks to user feedback, this was a top requested feature, so I hope this is a step in the right direction (feedback welcome in the comments below).

The next step is to use this new, efficient code to rewrite the Sales Rank checking script to improve its performance, with the goal being to complete it by the end of July as well as launch the sister DVD and Music sites. Stay tuned to the blog for an important post soon.

Update July 7, 2010
I’ve pushed through the script to complete checking every book at least once so it was done in 3 days instead of 23 days. I’ve also increased the speed so that currently it is around 19 days between checks. Thus, all review counts should now be up-to-date. If not, be patient… it will be in less than a month.