Book Sales RSS Feed and CSV Download on User Pages

NovelRank User Pages now have two new features: RSS Feeds for book sales and CSV/Excel download of monthly sales estimates!
These are both long requested features, so they are now available on the left side. If you don’t have a user page yet, create your own user page by logging in through your favorite 3rd party website. You will be prompted to setup your user page if this is your first time logging in through that service.

Both new features will include every book present on your user page in a single download/RSS. In both cases, the download is for the currently viewed Amazon domain (.com, .co.uk, .de, etc). Switching the domain will switch the links for the download/RSS to the new domain automatically. The RSS feed has one additional new benefit: Timezone aware! That’s right: Sale times are now adjusted for your account’s timezone, and the timezone is specified within the RSS feed. My little thank you to all the folks in Germany and the UK who use NovelRank!

Remember, if you are using a modern browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, you can also access the RSS feed from the URL/Address bar. Of course, you can also subscribe to the blog this way… The below image is from Firefox.

Enjoy the new features, and I hope your 2011 is starting off with lots of sales!

Book Sales Analysis Added to Book Details Page

I’ve slowly added a new feature to the book details page: analysis (circled in red).

As seen in the example above, the book analysis includes three items:

Best day of the week for sales to occur
Best hour of the day (or best 2 hours in case of a tie) for sales to occur
Breakdown of sales frequency

The first two items (marked with two red arrows) take into account two additional timezone aware facts: Sales occur 3 hours prior to the change in sales rank and the sale time should be adjusted for worldwide domain timezones, including GMT (United Kingdom), CET (Germany and France), and JST (Japan). Thus, you get a true indication, worldwide, of when your book is most popular in regards to days of the week and hours of the day.

The last item is a basic graphical example of sales frequency: How soon after the last sale does the next sale occur. This is represented with different symbols, described in the Key in the bottom-right (highlighted in yellow).

The analysis tab is the result of 4 hours I spent trying to aggregate this information across books that sell at different levels of frequency and develop some deeper sales analysis that takes the full breadth of books on NovelRank and provides some insight. Unfortunately, the results were not significant. Thus, the new tab was born to provide you information about individual books. In other words, I turned lemons into lemonade.

Note: Amazon.com sales are based on PST, so there is a small 2 hour margin of error in the ‘best X’ estimates.

January 2011 Giveaway: Featuring Progressive Press

The January 2011 giveaway features 3 books from Progressive Press:

“Obama: The Postmodern Coup” by Webster Griffin Tarpley
“The Nazi Hydra in America” by Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins
“Skulk” by Marc Estrin

Obama: The Postmodern Coup

This is a copy of Obama: The Postmodern Coup by Webster Griffin Tarpley, an intelligence expert and historian.

Remember compassionate conservatism and a humble foreign policy – and what happened then? Webster G. Tarpley reveals that the Obama puppet’s advisors are even more radical reactionaries than the neo-cons. A crash course in political science, it distills decades of political insight and astute analysis, from a unique perspective.

If you would like your chance of winning this book, add your email address to the form below. You’ll be notified by email if you are the winner, and you will also be opting into a follow-up email to let you know when the next book in the giveaway becomes available.

This giveaway is closed. Check out the current giveaway.

Share the Book Giveaway with Others:
Share or or http://www.novelrank.com/book-giveaway (will always be current)

The Nazi Hydra in America

This is a copy of The Nazi Hydra in America by Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, a suppressed history of a century with extensive appendices and indexes.

Exposes how US plutocrats launched Hitler, then recouped Nazi assets to lay the postwar foundations of a modern police state. Fascists won WWII because they ran both sides. Includes a blow-by-blow account of the fascist takeover of US media. “A valuable history of the relationship between big business in the United States and European fascism, before, during, and after the second World War. The story is shocking and sobering and deserves to be widely read.” – Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States.

This giveaway is closed. Check out the current giveaway.

Share the Book Giveaway with Others:
Share or or http://www.novelrank.com/book-giveaway (will always be current)

Skulk

This is a copy of Skulk by Marc Estrin, a post-911 comic novel.

A racy parody of political surreality with a stunning ending – and a truth tool for every activist toolbox. This is Estrin’s sixth novel – a story of two contradictory lovers, and the fate of their mad escapade to awaken sleepy Mid-America by staging “The Event.”

This giveaway is closed. Check out the current giveaway.

Share the Book Giveaway with Others:
Share or or http://www.novelrank.com/book-giveaway (will always be current)

The Rules
Any email address that is not valid will not be accepted. Any email to a temporary mailbox service (e.g. mailinator.com) will be disqualified and may be publicly mocked. Unless otherwise stated, only one book can be won by any single email address. Multiple entries for a single book will not be accepted (you can enter to win each book if different books are offered in a given month). The winner will be randomly drawn no later than the 3rd of the following month and contacted via email to receive shipping information. Winners who fail to respond to the email within 72 hours will forfeit their win to another random winner.

Sales Rank Myths Busted – What Effects Changes in SalesRank

It’s time to put myths, legends, and mysteries to rest. Sales rank has been elusive for too long, so thanks to the support of NovelRank donations, I’ve conducted a series of tests to answer some long standing questions about this elusive beast we call, Amazon’s Sales Rank!

MYTH: Sales rank improves when a review is added.

Reality: False. Testing reviews, verified purchases as well as unverified reviews had no effect on a book’s sales rank. This is false for anything except actual sales which do effect sales rank.

MYTH: Sales Rank automatically returns to original value when a kindle book is returned.

Reality: False. This was tested by purchasing a Kindle book at 5:47am. at 8am, Amazon reflected the new sales rank. At 8:30am, customer support was contacted and the e-book was returned. Sales rank deteriorated normally and did not reset back to the original pre-sale value.

MYTH: Book purchases effect sales rank immediately.

Reality: False. There is a 3 hour delay between when a purchase is completed and when the sales rank is reflected by Amazon. This ensures that the order will not be canceled (they are fast). This is true for both Kindle and print purchases.

MYTH: Purchases that are affiliate driven (Amazon pays a percentage of the price to the affiliate referrer) do not effect sales rank.

Reality: False. There is no difference to Amazon between an affiliate sales and a sale driven by Amazon.com direct searches. To them, a sale is a sale is a sale is a… you get the idea.

The above image began with “fairy tale map” by angelic0devil6, Creative Commons: Attribution license.

MYTH: Purchasing multiple copies on a single order does not improve sales rank like purchases made on two separate orders.

Reality: True! To perform this test, I purchased three different books within a single order. One was a control (single copy), one had two copies purchased in a single order, and the last had a single copy purchased. After submitting that order, using the same Amazon account, 10 minutes later I purchased a second copy of the 3rd book (which had a single copy purchased in the first order). The results? After 3 hours, all 3 books moved from a rank of 1,020,000 (+/- 14,000) to a rank of 123,500 (+/- 500). After 1 additional hour, the 3rd book moved to a rank of 64,000, reflecting the second purchase order!

MYTH: A canceled order will cancel the sales rank effect.

Reality: True. Purchasing a copy of a print book and then canceling the order 20 minutes later (while still allowed by Amazon) will not trigger a change in sales rank.

Final Thoughts

I hope everyone enjoyed this insight. If you have any myths you’ve always wanted busted, put them in the comments below. This is one of those tests I wanted to do for a long time, so I’m glad to finally get this information into the hands of authors. Basically, increase sales, and if possible, have them all happen at the same time using separate orders on Amazon to ensure the largest effect on sales rank! Make sure to use the links below to share this post with your fans and fellow authors.

Finally, thanks for using NovelRank and thank you to the supporters whose donations made this possible!