New software tool tracks Amazon Sales Rank
The past two years has seen an explosion of new software tools for online booksellers and publishers. The competition has sparked some useful innovations, but most of this specialized software still requires a hefty subscription fee beyond the reach of hobby sellers and part-time collectors.
Now a startup computer-book publisher in Washington state, Paradoxal Press, is offering a nifty little tool for tracking the Amazon Sales Rank of your favorite books. And best of all, it's free.
The "Amazon Sales Rank Watcher" allows you to search for products on Amazon by ISBN or keyword and quickly add them to your tracking list. You can adjust how often the program polls Amazon for the sales data, and a line is drawn on its chart, just like a stock chart. Unlike stock charts, of course, a downward-sloping line is preferable for Amazon Sales Ranks.
You can use the Rank Watcher to plot sales trends on weekly, monthly or annual time spans, and you can print and save your graphs. The program doesn't collect Amazon Marketplace pricing. Rank Watcher requires .NET Framework 2.0, so if you have an older computer, you may need to download .NET from Microsoft's Web site.
posted by Steve Weber at 2/09/2006
3 Comments:
Sounds great and most likely is except it is not downloadable.
It's a new kind of downloading process I had never seen before either. It took me a couple of tries (I think), but I was able to install an icon on my desktop and have been using the program for about a week. It's a newfangled download technique called "Microsoft OneClick." The advantage is that it automatically installs updates and improvements to the software. The disadvantage is, it's hard to tell whether the installation happened. I figure Microsoft was trying to make downloads as transparent as possible by not including any prompts or instructions. But the lack of any prompts does leave you in the dark, especially the first time you've used it.
Speaking of software, I just took a look at Amazon's "Web Services" page and was surprised to see several new programs since the last time I looked a few weeks ago. Used booksellers will want to scroll about halfway down the page to the "Seller Applications" area.
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