NovelRank Blog

NovelRank Trouble – Amazon Closed Affiliate Accounts in Colorado

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:06:58 +0000

As of this morning, March 8th, Amazon has announced that they are closing Amazon Affiliate accounts for Colorado residents in reaction to a new state sales tax law enacted on February 24, 2010. While users may not be aware, I’m a Colorado resident, and the Amazon Affiliate program is how NovelRank survives as a free service for authors to track their sales rank. The program pays a small percentage fee to me when anyone purchases any product on Amazon when clicking through NovelRank book links to Amazon pages. This costs the buyer nothing at all.

Amazon Affiliate payments were covering the website hosting costs for running the service for a total cost of $348 a year, but did not cover the 217+ hours I have spent building and improving NovelRank. I LOVE doing NovelRank, but this is really really bad as the hosting costs are now an out-of-pocket financial cost for me. I’m scrambling to try and get around this (or hope that Colorado law makers repeal the law and thus Amazon reinstates the Associates account). Till then, thank you to the two individuals who have donated directly to support NovelRank, and if you are able and wish to, a small donation would go a long way in allowing NovelRank to continue serving you (I have a lot of books to giveaway!).

Sincerely,
Mario Lurig
Creator, NovelRank

The full email I received this morning:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly [ http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLICS2010A/csl.nsf/directory?openframeset= ] and to Governor Ritter [ http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovRitter/GOVR/1177024890452 ], who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

Update: March 9, 2010 10:04 AM
According to WSJ about $35 million was generated for the 4,200 affiliates in Colorado. Estimated $1.62 million then in lost state tax revenue for a ‘projected’ $5 million from the new law.

NovelRank Book Giveaway Kick-Off! “MAGGIE: the dog who changed my life”

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:00:45 +0000

It’s officially the start of the NovelRank Book Giveaway, brought to you by the kind and generous independent authors and publishers who use NovelRank every day to track their Amazon Sales Rank and promote their magnificent books! Over 12 books have already arrived, with others promised and on the way. I am very excited to get this started!

Without further adieu, the book giveaway kicks off with a wonderful paperback book, “MAGGIE: the dog who changed my life: A Story of Love”. The author, Dawn Kairns, has been using NovelRank for a long time, and I was really thrilled to have her book drop into my mailbox first. Here’s what one reviewer said about this 5 star book:

“This book is a deeply moving story of the powerful connection between the author and her soulmate dog Maggie… Maggie opens the author’s heart and teaches her about trusting her intuition and listening with her heart. Interspersed with well-researched information about pet health care and advice on how to deal with the grieving process following the loss of a pet, this book shows us that animals are so much more than just pets… ”
- Ingrid King

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.

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. Multiple entries will not be accepted; don’t make me turn on duplicate protection. The winner will be drawn randomly 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.

For Authors: Getting Involved
For more information about donating your book to the book giveaway, check out this introductory announcement post on the book giveaway idea.

Authors: Donate your Novel for Monthly Promotion and Giveaway!

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:00:39 +0000

Let’s face it, authors are the biggest readers (we call it research) and love reading books as much or more than writing them. More importantly, authors are always looking for ways to promote their book to an attentive audience. With this in mind, and a touch of crazy, NovelRank would like to start doing a monthly book giveaway, supported by books donated by authors like you who track their books on NovelRank.

Why would NovelRank do this?

NovelRank should be more than a one-trick pony, as some of the unique blog posts have aspired to do. To that end, I would love to also share and promote author’s books in new and unique ways whenever possible. With some interest already from Rebecca Connell, Cami Checketts, Lisette Brodey, Cheryl Kaye Tardif, and Mike Dauplaise (with TitleTown Publishing), I think that this idea is ready to move forward.

What’s in it for me?

Free promotion of your book? Isn’t that what every author wants? Your book would be featured on NovelRank’s Publisher listing, promoted to twitter, facebook, and the NovelRank blog, and all the while being adored by hundreds. On January 5th, NovelRank had ~100 unique visitors a day. On February 5th, this doubled to 200+ unique visitors. January 2010 had over 11,500 visits to the site. As you continue to spread the word, this will continue to grow.

Seems too good to be true; what does NovelRank risk?

Cold. Hard. Cash. Seriously, I’ll be paying out of my own pocket to package and ship (anywhere in the world) the winner their copy of the monthly giveaway book. I also have to store all the books authors send to me until their time comes.

What’s the next step?

Contact me at giveaway@novelrank.com and let me know you would like to donate a book for the monthly NovelRank giveaway (not saying you must, but a signed copy would be pretty fantastic). I’ll send you my address so you can send along your promotion/donation. Make sure you include in the email a link to your book on NovelRank so I know what to expect and I also know it is not a random spammer trying to get my home address. Books will be promoted in a ‘first come most likely to serve sooner’ fashion, meaning that the sooner you send the book(s), the sooner they will be promoted. I’ll try and vary the book genres when possible, thus why it is not ‘first serve’.

Anything else?

Not really. Oh, one last thing: I’m actually a slow reader because I’m busy (guess with what), so I won’t be reading and reviewing every book before it is promoted. If you are looking for a review, I suggest LLBookReview.com.

Chart Amazon Book Sales: Tracking Books

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:57:16 +0000

I’ve been putting this off for too long, and finally took the initiative and got it done this morning in about 3 hours. You will now see a new Chart Type option when viewing your book on NovelRank: Book Sales. Book sales tracking has existed since NovelRank launched, but there was no way to see a chart or bar graph of the information, till now. Remember, these are still sales estimates, with accuracy decreasing for books selling more than 100 copies a month.

I have also updated the Download to Excel/CSV option so monthly Amazon sales estimates for the entire history of NovelRank tracking will be available. Better late than never. Here is another quick example with more domains present:

Finally, since I was in charting, I fixed a bug where you would see in the Domains drop-down menu all Amazon domains, even if your book was not tracked on that domain. That has been fixed, so only relevant domains will be displayed. Please hold your applause.

Search Tracked Books on NovelRank Now Available

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:00:55 +0000

Busy weekend! The final surprise for January 2010 is the addition of book search to the book tracking page. You can now search all the books tracked on NovelRank to see if yours is already tracked. Of course, if you know your book is tracked, but have no idea how to get to it, you are welcome to use the new feature as well. It’s a custom built search, so it will look for the most exact match first before going into a ‘looser’ search. Search by title or by author, your choice.

Now, if you are just curious, you could just search and see what comes up! You never know what amazing independent book you may find! Start searching for books right now.

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

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:00:36 +0000

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

Buying me a book from my Amazon Wish List.

Marketing with Book Preview – Browse Inside your Book

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:00:47 +0000

When you walk into a bookstore, you have the ability to pick up a book, open the cover, and read through as many pages as you wish so you can make a purchasing decision. Sure, you read the back cover first, and maybe that was enough, but at least you have the option. When marketing your book for its potential readers, you want to give them the ability to preview the book as well, so they can decide to purchase a copy for themselves.

There are three main methods for providing a book preview, and while all of these seem to compete, it is important to be aware that each one provides a different avenue to expose your audience to your book. In sheer marketing terms, using all of these options would be a beneficial use of your time. Finally, be aware that every one of these options are completely free.

Book Preview with BookBuzzr

BookBuzzr.com offers authors a Flash based book preview that not only has the feeling of physically turning pages, but it allows extraneous, author added details about the book to be included with the embedded widget. Furthermore, there is an extensive list of sharing options for social networking, blogging websites, and email, with a detailed list of instructions for each site.

BookBuzzr even allows you to use the micro-blogging website Twitter to let your followers know whenever your book was viewed. Secondary to that, the BookBuzzr account on Twitter promotes authors and books that are found on BookBuzzr as just an additional benefit for their authors. Going even farther, the fReado (parent of BookBuzzr) website offers listing and rankings for books that have been popular on the website, called their Movers and Shakers.

You can setup your account directly on BookBuzzr.com. You decide how many pages and which pages will be visible to your users, so you can share as much or as little as you wish. This is clearly the most advanced book preview widget available for free today.

Book Preview with Google Books

Everybody knows Google, and if you are searching for certain topics, Google Book Search will provide three books relevant to the search at the bottom of the page. If your book isn’t added to Google Book Search, its odds of appearing in this search are greatly reduced. Of course, Google offers an additional Book Preview widget. There are a few steps you should go through, starting with adding your book to Google Books and configuring all your settings, including custom purchase links, images, and page preview (with optional download). Once the book is setup, you will want to create the preview widget through their book preview wizard.

The Google widget can be configured as a button or a full embedded view. It is HTML based so it doesn’t require Flash to be installed, though the browsing is completely linear and not natural to how a buyer would browse a book in a store. There is an additional benefit of Table of Contents scanning, which makes the table of contents clickable within the preview, taking you directly to the appropriate page within the preview. Like BookBuzzr, this can be used to embed your book preview into your author or book’s website.

Book Preview with Amazon Look Inside

Amazon offers its Look Inside feature to any author or publisher who has their book listed on Amazon.com. Unlike the previous two options however, it is only available on Amazon.com. There is no embeddable widget. The preview is built into the page itself, triggered by clicking on the book’s cover image. Amazon offers a full FAQ for using and setting up Look Inside for your book. While this service won’t provide any additional marketing for your book, it will provide browsing of a small portion of your book for organic Amazon.com visitors to your book’s Amazon page. Be advised that every Amazon domain is different, and thus setting up Look Inside on Amazon.com will not carry over to Amazon.co.uk, and so forth.