[AuthorMichaelThomas]

Hey KBoard Authors, I created this new tool for Amazon Authors and would LOVE your feedback on it.

As you all know, Amazon sends us those ugly monthly sales reports in excel. I've often wished that I could find a way to take all of those reports and format it in a way that would be useful. Well, I finally created that tool. With the push of one button, your Amazon sales reports now get turned into a visual dashboard showing monthly sales trends, revenue by book, annual number of books sold, etc.

I would love to hear what you think about it. Would you like this as a stand-alone tool to download? Would it be better as a website?

Check it out here to see some screenshots, and sign up for the mailing list to be reminded when its released:
http://www.passivepublishing.com/author-earnings-dashboard/

 

[Leanne King]

Standalone. Definitely not a website. Web-based would involve either giving you a KDP password, or uploading sales data. I suspect many people would not be comfortable with either.

And preferably Mac based

 

[an758GnQExU249]

I'm not clear on what this is supposed to do other than convert the spreadsheet to a graph, which you can do yourself with Excel already. And this is useless for people who sell outside of Amazon.

Of course, I've never had a problem reading the spreadsheets as I am well-versed in Excel and use it on my day job all the time.

 

[AuthorMichaelThomas]

I'm not clear on what this is supposed to do other than convert the spreadsheet to a graph, which you can do yourself with Excel already. And this is useless for people who sell outside of Amazon.

Of course, I've never had a problem reading the spreadsheets as I am well-versed in Excel and use it on my day job all the time.

You're not wrong, it does convert all of your sales into a graph. However, the format Amazon sends is a mess, and its not exactly easy to do. You COULD do this yourself, but I've never seen anyone do it, and it wasn't easy to produce.

The power of this tool is that you can import say, all 12 months of data, and then see trends of your sales by month, even by purchase type (KU/KOLL vs. Countdown vs. Standard sales)

You are also correct that currently it is only for Amazon authors (we are on the Kboards!) but if I get enough interest, I would love to expand it to include other market places.

 

[Quiss]

I think it can be helpful tool, especially for those who are new to all this or who sell only at Amazon.

I'm always happy when I see people offer something new for us to try, so your work with this is appreciated.

 

[鬼]

I'd be open to trying it out especially if it included all of the other vendors. I know there's TrackerBox and other great ones out there already, but I can't use them being a Mac user. So far, I've been using BookTrakr.

 

[Heather Hamilton-Senter]

I'm interested. I'd be most interested in a standalone product.

 

[Jonas Cobos]

Great!! StandAlone will be better.

 

[AuthorMichaelThomas]

I'd be open to trying it out especially if it included all of the other vendors. I know there's TrackerBox and other great ones out there already, but I can't use them being a Mac user. So far, I've been using BookTrakr.

I would love to add a Mac version, being a Mac guy myself, but Excel for Mac doesn't support the Pivot Chart functionality in excel :-(

 

[Talwyn]

I would love to add a Mac version, being a Mac guy myself, but Excel for Mac doesn't support the Pivot Chart functionality in excel :-(

I wonder if that's why TrackerBox isn't offered for Mac.

 

[Leanne King]

So your product requires excel to be installed? Oh, in that case, no thanks.

 

[Lisa J. Yarde]

Looks interesting, especially as a person who isn't too savvy with Excel. Standalone, please.

 

[KaiW]

Love the sound of this especially if there's a life sales function, or sales separation by author like there is with D2D reports, thanks

 

[AuthorMichaelThomas]

Love the sound of this especially if there's a life sales function, or sales separation by author like there is with D2D reports, thanks

I am working to add a function to separate and slice sales by pen name. Adding life sales is complex due to the amount of data.

 

[MyraScott]

This looks interesting!

If you expand it to include other retailers, it would be even more useful. What do you plan to charge for it?

 

[75814]

My big question would be what makes this different from TrackerBox, which does the same thing but for all retailers? If the answer is that it would work for Mac (unlike TB), then I'd be all over it.

 

[Kenson]

It's nice and neat and I like the idea.  I don't need it myself because I'm fairly clued up on Excel but for anybody who's not that familiar with Excel, it could be useful.  Those zombie end of month reports are diabolical.

 

[Mark E. Cooper]

Hey KBoard Authors, I created this new tool for Amazon Authors and would LOVE your feedback on it.

As you all know, Amazon sends us those ugly monthly sales reports in excel. I've often wished that I could find a way to take all of those reports and format it in a way that would be useful. Well, I finally created that tool. With the push of one button, your Amazon sales reports now get turned into a visual dashboard showing monthly sales trends, revenue by book, annual number of books sold, etc.

I would love to hear what you think about it. Would you like this as a stand-alone tool to download? Would it be better as a website?

Check it out here to see some screenshots, and sign up for the mailing list to be reminded when its released:
http://www.passivepublishing.com/author-earnings-dashboard/

Graphs, I LOVE graphs! I'm in. So far all my own spreadsheets are self taught from figuring out how to sum two cells together, all the way to creating linked workbooks that update with graphs and currencies etc. Before going full time in mid 2013, I had never touched excel. Now it's like my goto tool!

 

[ccyrbs]

I think it is a great idea. I'm quite excel savvy and I'd still find it helpful, because I agree that the amazon spreadsheets are really terrible. I wouldn't mind if they just put everything on one line (i.e. store locals in a row cell) and then it would be easy to just combine into a single sheet for analysis.
Definitely standalone.
Thanks.

 

[jvin248]

For Mac and non-MSOffice-owners ... LibreOffice.org has Pivot Tables and will read in all your favorite Excel files.  OP, I'd suggest installing LO and test it out with your spreadsheet and if it works then certainly suggest that as an option for people without Excel or the interest in obtaining it.

I was trying to help someone on the Web-based Office 365 Excel and either that does not have Pivot Table functionality or it is a separate module that that person did not have installed/purchased/rented/etc but they did not have the option.