A quick test recently confirmed that when a customer borrows your ebook and reads it through the Kindle Unlimited program, that counts as a sale the same way as if they had purchased your Kindle book directly. To demonstrate this here are is the salesrank data for the test book:
With the addition of the new Lending Library program which includes 5 days of free pricing for your kindle book, I thought it was time to write up a quick post to explain how sales rank on Amazon works in regards to free titles.
Amazon displays a separate sales ranking for books that are free compared to their paid sales rank categories (price of at least $0.01). While these are both visible on Amazon directly, the Amazon API that powers the sales rank tracking of every website, including NovelRank, will not report a sales rank for free books. This also means that if your book has a price one day, and then switches to free pricing for even just 1 day, it will no longer offer a sales rank that can be tracked until it becomes a paid title again. Here’s a breakdown of what will happen in terms of NovelRank.
The new Lending Library option to make your book free for 5 days during the 90 day period of exclusivity is phenomenal for promotional purposes, but please be aware that when that free period ends, you will need to reactivate the book for tracking on NovelRank.
I hope that clears up the free and paid sales rank issuess and how they will affect your ability to track sales rank info here on NovelRank.
Amazon has just announced that Kindle Edition ebooks will now be available on Amazon.es (Spain) and Amazon.it (Italy), and thus your Kindle Edition books setup through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) will automatically become available on these sites. NovelRank has also been adjusted to now allow tracking for kindle e-books on these new domains as well. It’s not automatic, and still requires you head to the Tracking page to check for new domains (if a sales has occurred), but it is now allowed. Enjoy!
With today’s announcement from Amazon that Kindle Edition e-books will now be available for customers in Germany and worldwide who use Amazon.de, NovelRank has been updated to support this new store! You can now track your Kindle book sales on Amazon.de by going to the book tracking page on NovelRank and adding your URL, just like you did for the print editions. NovelRank’s second largest user base are books in German, published by German authors, and distributed exclusively on Amazon.de. Therefore, this update to NovelRank was made shortly after the announcement.
If NovelRank is already tracking your Kindle Edition book in other domains, just grab the Amazon URL again or the book’s ASIN (highlighted in the example below) and enter it again into the box on the sales rank tracking page, making sure to check the ‘Additional Domains’ box. The system will search whether a sales rank on Amazon.de is present, and add the book if it is available.
http://www.novelrank.com/asin/1234567890
Note: In most cases, your kindle book has not yet sold a copy, so no sales rank is present and NovelRank will not be able to begin tracking. As soon as you have a sales rank (a single sale will do it) on Amazon.de, it can be added to NovelRank using the method above. My personal trick? Buy a copy as a gift for a friend. About 3 hours later, you will have a sales rank and can add it for tracking on NovelRank.