Category Archives: News

Tracking Kindle Sales Rank for Kindle Books Now Available (Again)

Amazon Kindle 6"I’m very very (very very very) thrilled to announce that NovelRank has overcome Amazon’s limits and is now capable of tracking Kindle Edition books again! Kindle tracking is a heavily requested feature, and NovelRank is the only Kindle tracker available on the web at this time. Just like the rest of the books on NovelRank, this also means that besides tracking Kindle sales rank, you will also receive Kindle sales estimates.

You can add Kindle books on the book tracking page, as well as see the Top 10 best selling Kindle books. This is a critical improvement for 2011, because Amazon has already stated that on Christmas Day (December 25) 2010, it was the first time ever that Kindle books outsold all other formats. While I personally love the feel and the smell of a print edition book, I can definitely see the draw for some people who come to rely on e-ink and digital e-books.

There are 2 limitations however with the implementation: The edition will always be 1, and I cannot track the number of reviews for that book (this is something NovelRank collects for all books, but until I’m checking for new reviews regularly, it is not part of the data that is shown on the site). These are pretty minor and definitely not deal breakers, but NovelRank is all about transparency, so it was worth a mention.

Fair warning, there has been notably less data about Kindle book sales history and sales rank tracking in the past few months, so there will still be some adjustments in the coming months to the sales estimates that are generated. For now, just like all other book formats, Kindle books with average to low volume of sales will be very accurate. Heavy sales of Kindle ebooks will probably be slightly off; after all, these are still estimates. Feedback is always welcome, leave a comment below. Oh, and tell your author friends. :)

Update: February 11, 2010
Be advised that Amazon does not offer any affiliate payments (how NovelRank stays running) based on Kindle ebook purchases. If tracking your Kindle book exclusively on NovelRank is providing a valuable service for you, please consider:




  Making a $10 donation

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Buying me a book from my Amazon Wish List.

Publisher Listings Now Available!

So I was on Christmas vacation and I couldn’t get NovelRank out of my head. How can I make things easier for users (and for search engines) to find all of the amazing books being tracking on NovelRank? Well, after about 6 hours of work, I have the answer: Publishers.

As of today (actually last night), you can now view a list of all of the publishers listed for book’s tracked on NovelRank. Secondarily, you can also then select any of those publishers (they are listed alphabetically), and view all of the books tracked for that publisher, with their titles, format, author(s), and of course link to view their page!

Finally, on any of the book’s detail pages, on the left side where the stats are listed for the book, the publisher option is now a clickable link to go see other books from that publisher. Now, this is based on Amazon provided data, so you will find things like O’Reilly Media and also O’Reilly Media, Inc. listed as two separate publishers. I’m not here to correct Amazon, just list it as stated.

Enjoy, have fun, and be safe this New Year’s Eve! 2010 is looking smashing!

NovelRank improvements through the rest of 2009

Being in the middle of November, a month filled with novel writing for NaNoWriMo, Thanksgiving (U.S. holiday), and a trip to Orlando, FL to work a conference and visit old friends, NovelRank development will take a back seat for a little while. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any goals for NovelRank development before the end of 2009. In no particular order:

  • Flip sales rank chart so that lower numbers are higher
  • Add charts for book sales (bar graphs) Done!
  • Add book sales data via CSV spreadsheet download Done!
  • Add RSS feeds for individual domains Done!
  • Add a second URL for accessing books in the format: …com/title/name-of-book Done!
  • Provide the first of many analysis/research articles about books by self-publishing authors available on Amazon.com and their specific self-publishing publishers Done!

It’s not an exhaustive list, for sure, but there is a bit of work involved. Luckily, the foundations have already been built, this just adds more depth to the features currently available. If you have a desire to keep me motivated, feel free to tell 3 friends about NovelRank, or post about it on your blog, forums for authors that you visit, or on Twitter and Facebook.

Germany, France, and Japan Sales Rank Data

Woohoo! NovelRank now supports tracking on Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.fr (France), and Amazon.co.jp (Japan) to get your sales rank data. It’s opt-in when you submit your book for tracking by checking the ‘Additional domains’ checkbox. Even better, you can simply click on the ‘Additional Domains’ text and it will check the box for you, because who wants to aim their cursor at a tiny box!

I’m a fan of what Aaron Shepard has provided for years at SalesRankExpress.com. It really is the most robust snap-shot of information you can get on any of Amazon’s domains. He’s also very clear that he doesn’t do tracking over time, which is perfectly fine since that’s where NovelRank can step in. Looking around though, nobody was providing sales rank data over time for .de, .fr, and .co.jp. Heck, till NovelRank started doing it, nobody was tracking .ca (Canada) either! Well, it was a small step to enable this within NovelRank, and I’m very happy to announce it’s availability. Whether it is called Sales Rank, Classement parmi les ventes, Verkaufsrang, or ランキング (yup, completely borrowed that idea from Aaron), it’s all available on NovelRank.

Charting has been updated to represent the new domains, but any books that have already been added and want to track their sales data on Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.co.jp, will need to resubmit their book for tracking. Be advised, the default view (nothing expanded) for your book may seem a little cluttered if your book is available at all 6 domains (and has sold at least one book so that a sales rank is present). Here are two visual aids:

Coders at Work - All Domains

Coders at Work - All Domains


Crush It! - English Domains

Crush It! - English Domains

Of course, with a large screen resolution (many visitors fit in this category), this won’t be an issue, but worth a mention none-the-less. NovelRank aims to be the best resource for authors tracking their sales rank data, and that can only happen with your help. Use the social networking links below to share this with friends, retweet, and post on author forums you engage with. Word of mouth not only helps sell books, but also helps NovelRank keep up with the costs for hosting this website when someone clicks through to Amazon from your book’s page on NovelRank and buys a copy. Thanks in advance and enjoy the new domains!