Tag Archives: kindle edition

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

or

Buying me a book from my Amazon Wish List.

Amazon Product Advertising API and Kindle Edition Books

Update: January 23, 2010 8:00am MDT
NovelRank now offers Kindle book tracking again! http://www.novelrank.com/blog/tracking-kindle-sales-rank-book-tracker-available/

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As of 11pm EDT on August 13th, 2009, some problems have been creeping up in the interactions with the Amazon API. NovelRank uses the API to gather Sales Rank data about paperbacks, hardcovers, and kindle edition books. First the problem was 1 book (the first one ever added), then an hour later 2… 24 hours later, all Kindle Edition books tracked by NovelRank are not returning any SalesRank numbers.

There is an erroneous error being returned by Amazon:
AWS.ECommerceService.ItemNotAccessible

Originally I suspected a bug, but as the day has moved on, it looks like a deliberate move by Amazon to no longer make Kindle book information (SalesRank specifically) available. I’ve posted in their forums and will continue to try and get some word from Amazon on the status. It would be unfortunate if this was blocked, since many authors don’t have direct access to the sales numbers provided by Amazon for Kindle books unless they are self-published and added it themselves rather than their publisher.

Hopefully more info will come soon. Till then, current Sales Rank for Kindle Edition books will be shown as 0. I’ll keep trying; let’s hope it works out for the better.

Update: August 19, 2009 2:16pm MDT
It seems Kindle Edition books are also not being returned via the API ‘ItemLookup’ either. Kindle Edition books are being completely blocked. Tested with an ASIN based ItemLookup. No response or word from Amazon on the forums at all.

Update: September 30, 2009 7:29pm MDT
Aaron Shepard over at SalesRankExpress has called it quits on Amazon Kindle books through the API, and has proposed a theory as to why on on his blogin the Sept. 20th post. He’s also updated it with the same update I’m about to give: Amazon, without explanation, has confirmed this to be permanent. For now, Kindle Edition books will no longer be added to NovelRank and hopefully in the next few months, I’ll write all new code to add Kindle Edition books as well as scrape Amazon.com for SalesRank. This will take a notable amount of work, so it will be pushed off till the future. Sorry folks, this is frustrating for me as well as an author of a paperback and Kindle book.