Posts Tagged ‘charts’

SalesRank Comparison Charts for Multiple Books

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

User Book Comparison Charts
Yes, you read that right. If you’ve setup a user account and visit your user page, you will now find, at the bottom, a new form for selecting up to 3 books from your user page for comparison. The chart provided will display the salesrank over the past 30 days for all of the books you selected. This allows you to compare how certain titles are doing against each other in the last 30 days.

Oh, did you notice something else?
The chart is using Google’s charting API, which means that it is created completely in JavaScript by your web browser. That also means that it is visible even if you are using a device that does not support Adobe Flash, such as an Apple iPad. The downside to this new chart tool is that it does not allow for fullscreen mode and takes longer to display. On average, it will take 1 second to load the chart for each book selected (1 second for 1 book, 2 seconds for 2 books, etc).

Finally, the new chart is timezone aware, much like the RSS feeds on your user page. This allows you to get a more accurate picture of things if you are not located in the Pacific Timezone.

This is the first of two planned major improvements coming for NovelRank, and if you have any feedback on this new charting feature, positive or negative, leave it in the comments below.

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Book Sales Numbers (Kindle) and Other Improvements

Monday, May 31st, 2010

A quick update for those not following NovelRank on Twitter or Facebook (where I toss out real-time information about updates to the site):

  • The new book sales number estimates for Kindle Edition books were applied retroactively, adjusting the sales for all Kindle books tracked since the beginning. In most cases, this saw an increase in sales, but in a few cases, there was a decrease. This was based on the new more accurate formula.
  • Some tweaks to properly displaying non-US characters were put in place. There are still some imperfections, but this affected the User Pages as well as book Details pages.
  • Book Sales Numbers displayed in charts on the book Details pages are now using a 3d column bar chart. You can left-click on the chart and rotate it along the x an y axis now as well. This should give the graphs a little more ‘punch’. Previously, they were flat columns.

Once last announcement… well, preemptively. I intend to do a few more tweaks in June to NovelRank before I work on new features. However, the goal is to replicate NovelRank two more times to serve the DVD and music communities. Much like NovelRank focuses on tracking books, there will be two new sites, one tracking Sales Rank for DVDs and one for music. Stay tuned for announcements when they go online, as a few people have asked if NovelRank could track DVDs (the answer is still no, but there will be a place to do that soon, with all the same power).

Cheers,
Mario, Creator of NovelRank, a community supported website

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Chart Amazon Book Sales: Tracking Books

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Book Sales Chart - Dating GuideI’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:

Sales Chart - All Domains

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.

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NovelRank improvements through the rest of 2009

Monday, November 9th, 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.

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