# KDP frozen since 4 pm PST--you too or just me?



## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Four hours . . . Happens all the time, I know, but this has become woeful Wednesday


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Yes, frozen for me too.

It's killing me, since my book is free and in the top 20. 

Vicki


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## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

Frozen as well!


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

4 PM PST would be 6 PM CST?

I think the last I saw mine update was right around 7:00 PM, but, then again, the time I checked before that was like 4:00 or 5:00 PM Central.

I've seen it freeze up until the wee hours of the morning lately. Maybe they're doing maintenance since it tends to be slower in August.


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## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

Victorine said:


> Yes, frozen for me too.
> 
> It's killing me, since my book is free and in the top 20.
> 
> Vicki


The freeze could probably help you, then, actually. If it were to slip from the top 20 at any point, the freeze will keep it there - more downloads? 

I try to think positively these days - much better for the soul.


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## MaryKingsley (Mar 26, 2011)

Phew.  I thought maybe my sales had stopped altogether.  This situation's tough, but at least we know it's Amazon's problem, not ours.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Hallelujah!  Not that I'm cheering frozen-ness . . .


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## LizzyFord (Jan 4, 2011)

My numbers are frozen, but my rankings have been moving ... must mean the numbers are working in the background, but something is wrong with the interface??  No idea.  The ranking I'm most interested in has moved twice in the past few hours even though my numbers haven't.  I'm averaging about 60 sales a day and about 1200 free downloads a day on Amazon, so the numbers should be moving somewhere ...


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Yep. Frozen. I always sell a pretty specific number in the late afternoon through evening. It's like clockwork. But not today...


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## Ryne Billings (May 15, 2011)

I love KB. I had no idea they were frozen until I saw this thread. I thought I was just having a bad name. My rankings are moving in a positive direction, so I must have sold another one. I was afraid I wouldn't sell a tenth one for the day. I like having this streak going. This has to be my nineteenth day in a row of selling ten books a day. It's stuck at nine for the day right now, so it being frozen is a bit relieving for me.


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## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

It's really driving me nuts.  To make matters worse, facebook is at a crawl for me tonight, which makes it harder to do all the updates to my page that I'm trying to work on.  *sigh*  Maybe Amazon's trying to cure us of our sale checking every 4 minutes habit.


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## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

Honestly, I thought you guys were crazy, but my sales report hasn't budged and I just checked my ranking on my YA novel and suddenly had a 60k rank jump. So yeah. It's 11:20pm CA and it is still frozen. Kinda frustrating, but also, THANK GOD! I thought I'd lost all momentum, whew indeed.


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## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

Sorry guys, it was me.  One of my stories went free today so Amazon had to be put on hold to count my millions.


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## Philip Chen (Aug 8, 2010)

No, it was my fault.  I raised the price on my thriller to $2.99 on August 4, and this is how Auntie Ammy is punishing me.  This her way of saying, "No one leaves the classroom until Phil learns that his book is just pulp fiction."


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## Usedtopostheretoo! (Feb 27, 2011)

I think they're still frozen...or I didn't sell a book last night, which has never happened before. First for everything I suppose. Anyone else still seeing the same number?


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## EveLanglais (Nov 29, 2010)

Mine seems still frozen. No movement in about 12 hrs which has never happened before. I even did a test purchase about 6 hours ago that never showed up. So glad  I found this thread lol. I thought I was going crazy.


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## portiadacosta (Feb 28, 2011)

I wish I could say mine was frozen. But I did have a couple of sales overnight, so mine's not frozen... it's just that nobody's buying much of my stuff at the moment.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

I had a few overnight but nothing at all today so far (it's almost midday here in France) yet my rank is still holding!


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## Usedtopostheretoo! (Feb 27, 2011)

I love these boards...I have to do math to figure out the time differences. I now get emails from New Zealand, Australia, Europe...all coming at me at different times of the day. I hope KDP is frozen. It would be odd not to sell one book overnight, and I went to bed early.


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## drewschmidt (Jun 4, 2011)

Ah thank you, thank you KB!!! I can't tell you how much we appreciate this forum. I record the sales for my wife every morning....and then of course we sneak a peek off and on during the day. We haven't seen anything over night....and usually she would sell at least something between 6:00 pm EST and 6:00 am EST. But nothing this time around. I don't usually contact KDP on such things but I just fired off a message. We'll see what they come back with.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Yep, my ranking has been going up in the last 24 hours, but I haven't sold anything according to KDP.

And my German sales have been frozen for months...


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## DevonMark (Jan 28, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> And my German sales have been frozen for months...


I have noticed the delay in reporting German sales too.


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Hmmm. I wonder if maybe it is. (I hope it is!!!)  I have 13 titles out and not one sale in the US or UK for 12 hours.  I even have a free title in the UK and haven't seen a change in that either (although the rank improved on that one.) I had been selling 40-50 across my collection a day, so to just suddenly come to a standstill is weird.  And I don't think I've ever woken up to no new sales.  I think I'm going to have to agree it's Philip's fault.


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## Saffina Desforges (Dec 8, 2010)

Also stuck


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## Ann Chambers (Apr 24, 2011)

So glad this thread is here! Just released my HCG book July 23 and it has been steadily gaining in sales and ranking, then last night nothing! This morning, still nothing! (Had first UK sale yesterday, though. Woo!) But this thread reminded me to check its ranking. It's off a little bit from what it had been, but just barely. So there must be some sales out there waiting for KDP to unfreeze. Whew.


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## DevonMark (Jan 28, 2011)

Maybe the age of the ebook is over already. The bubble has burst and people have just stopped buying. Arrgghh!


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

Still frozen this morning. /sob


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

Still frozen for me. . . I hope.


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## Philip Chen (Aug 8, 2010)

Let's just think of it as giving our electrons a well-deserved break.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

I have had no overnight sales post. I think I saw an update last night, around 7:00 p.m. CT, then nothing. Seems like there have been issues ever since the cloud crash on Tuesday. Or was that the stock market crash on Monday AND Wednesday? Hmm.


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## Tara Shuler (Apr 24, 2011)

I was hoping the reason I had no sales at all in hours and hours was because of something like this, but my rankings have dropped like a brick, too.

I'm in a state of panic right now.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Yeah, my numbers have been stuck since late yesterday afternoon.


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## Joseph Rhea (Nov 9, 2009)

My NovelRank graph shows several sales late last night and this morning that are not showing up in my KDP report, so it's definitely not updating...


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## Peter Salisbury (Mar 3, 2010)

I don't know about giving the electrons a break, Phil (doesn't entropy keep them jumping anyway?? ) I need a break after cutting the grass and chopping up a tree this morning.

It's Thursday 1 pm GMT in the UK, which means my KDP reports (even freebies) have been stuck for 14 hours.

KDP lost all my UK sales for 3 weeks in March this year but I'm hoping they'll have this fixed more quickly. On the other hand, you could look at it this way "We've just got Look Inside, you want Reports to work as well?"


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

I haven't show any sales for a couple of days for Amazon.  However, my sales have continued at Barnes & Noble.  I love the spreadsheet that B&N uses since it shows everything very clear and is far superior to Amazon's spreadsheet.


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## Nadine (Jul 10, 2011)

Thankfully there is the Kindle boards to prevent me from tossing my computer over my terrace.

Between Facebook not working, and no sales on Kindle, I was going to run screaming into the jungle.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Maybe the age of the ebook is over already. The bubble has burst and people have just stopped buying.


I guess my bubble has happened faster than I thought. I am glad I still have my day job.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

Bah, and things were just starting to rebound after a weekend slump. Think I'll go do something productive, like edit or paint the garage today.

It'll come back . . .  eventually.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

As it happens, I'm taking the kids to the Air and Space Center today, so I can't sit around and click on KDP endlessly.  Which is just as well. 

Glad for this thread, though-- otherwise I really would be worried my sales had just stopped!


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## Christine Kersey (Feb 13, 2011)

I'm so relieved to see it's KDP! My sales plummeted, so I was wondering. I knew I could come on here and find out though. You guys are all awesome for sharing what is happening with your sales!


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## kellymcclymer (Apr 22, 2010)

Christine Kersey said:


> I'm so relieved to see it's KDP! My sales plummeted, so I was wondering. I knew I could come on here and find out though. You guys are all awesome for sharing what is happening with your sales!


No sales since last night, either. How funny that I came here to find out if it was just me. Oh well. Now we can look at this thread and see who was obsessed about sales recently 

Fortunately, I have to go help a friend set up for a yard sale today, so I will be away from the computer and otherwise occupied.


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## karencantwell (Jun 17, 2010)

Whew! I nearly had a myocardial meltdown when I logged onto the KDP this morning. Not glad that none of us can check our ACCURATE sales, but sure glad the KB is here so we can share.     

Hopefully this will resolve soon.  I remember this happened last year too - just about the same time of August I think.


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## 40977 (Mar 31, 2011)

I guess I'll just have to compulsively check novelrank in the meantime...


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## Tara Shuler (Apr 24, 2011)

Tmarchini said:


> I guess I'll just have to compulsively check novelrank in the meantime...


NovelRank is WAY off for me. It's only reporting about half as many sales as I've really had so far this month. And last month it says I made only about 10% of the sales I actually got.


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## 40977 (Mar 31, 2011)

Tara Shuler said:


> NovelRank is WAY off for me. It's only reporting about half as many sales as I've really had so far this month. And last month it says I made only about 10% of the sales I actually got.


Mine is off too, but I thought that was a function of me only using it in the last week or so.... hmm, it doesn't get any more accurate as time goes on?


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## Michael Robertson Jr (Feb 24, 2011)

I came here this morning looking specifically for this thread, hoping it wasn't just me. Hope they get it fixed soon.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

When I saw my numbers (or lack thereof) this morning I immediately:

1) Had a mental breakdown
2) Scurried over here to see if something was up

Whew!  Looks like there's a chance to recoup all the losses after all!  Thank you, KB!  Without you I'd be tearing my hair out.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

NovelRank is not an accurate way of tracking sales. The more you sell, the further off it is. From the FAQ:



> Book sales estimates are still estimates, and for books selling a low volume ( less than 100 copies a month for instance ) the estimates are most likely accurate within 1%. In the end, it is all based on sales rank changes rather than sales numbers, and NovelRank should not be used to dispute hard sales figures from publishers or Amazon.


This means that for big sellers, it can be off literally by thousands of copies.



> How do we know the reporting is accurate when it finally does come back up?


How do we know the reporting is accurate the rest of the time? *shrugs* It's something we just have to take on faith, I guess.



> Now we can look at this thread and see who was obsessed about sales recently.


Recently? Try perpetually.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

J. Carson Black said:


> When I saw my numbers (or lack thereof) this morning I immediately:
> 
> 1) Had a mental breakdown
> 2) Scurried over here to see if something was up
> ...


Dittos. I'm so grateful for this board so I can quickly find out what's going on. Thanks, guys.


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## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

Nadine said:


> Thankfully there is the Kindle boards to prevent me from tossing my computer over my terrace.
> 
> Between Facebook not working, and no sales on Kindle, I was going to run screaming into the jungle.


Me too . . . except I was going to run into the forest. The nearest jungle is at least a thousand miles away and I don't have that kind of endurance. Actually, I was going to drive to the forest and run into it, cuz I'm getting too old.


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

Edit: link not working. Getting used to my new phne still. Informationweek has some stuff out about cloud servers being pooched b y lightning.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

sibelhodge said:


> This is worrying because it's happened several times in the last few months. How do we know the reporting is accurate when it finally does come back up?


That's the first thought in my head, Sibel.

Something else peculiar happened to me, I one-clicked a book in the UK and the book appeared on the kindle along with a message to say that my credit card wasn't recognised.

It's the same card I used to purchase 10 books the other day!!!

Makes you wonder if anything is working properly.

Has anyone else had a problem purchasing a book?


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

An update on what I just said about purchasing a book.

Received this email from Amazon. I think the whole site is down,

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk. We want to inform you that we are having difficulty processing your payment and thus are unable to proceed with your Kindle order . Though your order may have already been delivered to you, it is important that you visit the following page within 5 days to update the payment information for this order: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/digital/your-account/order-summary.html? Once we receive a valid payment method, you will be able to re-download your Kindle content from Archived Items on your Kindle or Kindle reading application, or from Manage Your Kindle on your computer. If you have any questions, please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlesupport or contact our Kindle customer services team at 0800 496 2449. Please note: This e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk. Sincerely,Amazon Kindle Customer Service http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlesupport


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## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

Tara Shuler said:


> NovelRank is WAY off for me. It's only reporting about half as many sales as I've really had so far this month. And last month it says I made only about 10% of the sales I actually got.


NovelRank was so wildly inaccurate the few times that I checked it that I never bothered to go back. That was like two months ago.

I was wondering what the deal was with this week's numbers. I've been at 13/day average pretty steady for the last three weeks (growing slowly), yet sunday and Monday were sucky numbers, then Tuesday exploded with 19, then back to 9 yesterday. At least now this thread has given me a possible explanation for it.


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## Dawn Judd (Jun 8, 2010)

Very frustrating because my book went free yesterday and I can't see any numbers.  I know it's being downloaded because the rank on both my books has changed drastically overnight.


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Mel Comley said:


> An update on what I just said about purchasing a book.
> 
> Received this email from Amazon. I think the whole site is down,
> 
> Greetings from Amazon.co.uk. We want to inform you that we are having difficulty processing your payment and thus are unable to proceed with your Kindle order . Though your order may have already been delivered to you, it is important that you visit the following page within 5 days to update the payment information for this order: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/digital/your-account/order-summary.html? Once we receive a valid payment method, you will be able to re-download your Kindle content from Archived Items on your Kindle or Kindle reading application, or from Manage Your Kindle on your computer. If you have any questions, please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlesupport or contact our Kindle customer services team at 0800 496 2449. Please note: This e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk. Sincerely,Amazon Kindle Customer Service http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlesupport


Oh yikes. So maybe we're really not making any sales because amazon's BROKEN!?


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Well, I just "bought" a free book, and it worked fine. 

As a side note, it pushed it to the Cloud Reader first. Interesting.


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

I don't think all of amazon is broken. My rank is still fluctuating. It looks like their reporting system is messed. Hopefully the front end will be able to update our reports even they get it back up.


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## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> As a side note, it pushed it to the Cloud Reader first. Interesting.


That's an interesting point. I wonder if their new Cloud Reader is causing integration problems with the KDP reporting? Maybe they tested it in-house, but a bug or ten made it through, and is playing merry havoc with the reporting system? That would explain a lot.


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## IndiaLeeBooks (Apr 10, 2011)

Lisa Scott said:


> Oh yikes. So maybe we're really not making any sales because amazon's BROKEN!?


I'm hopeful that's not the case and it seems to be possible because my rank is still moving around. And just to make sure, I just one-clicked a book after typing the sentence previous to this one and it worked! Hopefully this is resolved soon because curiosity's going to get the best of me... which is nice way of saying if by noon EST, this is still not working - I might lose it a little.


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## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

I was really hoping when I woke up this morning it would be fixed. But I know I had at least one sale (if not more) that changed my novel ranking significantly and my sales havent changed. I think my short erotica may have sold too because my rank hasnt plummeted yet. This is so frustrating after the early week slump when the world went nutsy coo coo.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Greetings from Amazon.co.uk. We want to inform you that we are having difficulty processing your payment and thus are unable to proceed with your Kindle order . Though your order may have already been delivered to you, it is important that you visit the following page within 5 days to update the payment information for this order: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/digital/your-account/order-summary.html? Once we receive a valid payment method, you will be able to re-download your Kindle content from Archived Items on your Kindle or Kindle reading application, or from Manage Your Kindle on your computer. If you have any questions, please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlesupport or contact our Kindle customer services team at 0800 496 2449. Please note: This e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk. Sincerely,Amazon Kindle Customer Service http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlesupport


I got a message like that since my credit card had expired. I had received a new credit card, but had not updated the information on Amazon. So I updated it and it went through fine.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

My rank has been getting better over the last 12 hours for one of my titles, so it seems there are sales happening. I'm sure it's just a reporting delay.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

No my card is fine, thanks. Like I said I used it a few days ago on Amazon, I know there's plenty of dosh in that account! lol


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## R.G. Gilbert (Jul 19, 2011)

Yeah it's frozen for me too. Has been for about 24 hours now (though, of course, it could be substantially less time that it was actually frozen). When I went to bed last night I was at 70xxx in rank, and now according to Amazon I'm up to 29xxx, so I'm sure there's been some sales that aren't showing up yet. 

I figure I'll lay off checking until one of you good people posts that it's working again!

Cheers.


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## Peter Salisbury (Mar 3, 2010)

I just remembered that last time KDP Reports was broken, Author Central had a message about it. I took a look at mine (separate Author Centrals for UK and US). There wasn't a message I could see but the graphs seem to be still going as usual.

The graphs show changes in sales rank and so give some impression that sales are taking place.


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## JenniferBecton (Oct 21, 2010)

We're like crack addicts. We need our numbers fix! GAH!


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## heartland (Jul 17, 2011)

When you guys say you are checking your ranking, where are you looking?  I have Novelrank set up but because it is inaccurate (at least based on my sales it is), is there another place that checks that or are you just checking the location of your book?


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## Nadine (Jul 10, 2011)

Does anyone know if we get credit for the books we sold once it is unfrozen.  Or is that an impossible thing to really know?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

KDP sales reporting is a very low priority item for Amazon. They could function very well if they eliminated it. So it's not necessary for sales. Nor is it necessary in order to pay the authors. If Amazon knows what books it sold, it knows what authors to pay.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

So it's morning now and as you all can see, we still have no sales!  This is the first time the morning hasn't healed all.  Ah well.  18 hours for me without a sale.  My rankings are okay so you have to assume . . .


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## LarryEnright (Nov 27, 2010)

Nothing is impossible in the eAge. That scares me most.


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## IndiaLeeBooks (Apr 10, 2011)

heartland said:


> When you guys say you are checking your ranking, where are you looking? I have Novelrank set up but because it is inaccurate (at least based on my sales it is), is there another place that checks that or are you just checking the location of your book?


I check on Author Central as well as just my actual Amazon page for rank. While Novelrank is inaccurate in sales, it's always been decent in tracking rank - at least for me. My sales numbers have been consistently off by hundreds but rank has always been spot on.


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## Tonya (Feb 21, 2011)

BrianKittrell said:


> 4 PM PST would be 6 PM CST?
> 
> I think the last I saw mine update was right around 7:00 PM, but, then again, the time I checked before that was like 4:00 or 5:00 PM Central.
> 
> I've seen it freeze up until the wee hours of the morning lately. Maybe they're doing maintenance since it tends to be slower in August.


Me too! Last night I was up to 75 total at 7 pm and now I'm suck....hmmmm.....I feel like I'm with a publishing house!


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## Peter Salisbury (Mar 3, 2010)

Peter Salisbury said:


> I just remembered that last time KDP Reports was broken, Author Central had a message about it. I took a look at mine (separate Author Centrals for UK and US). There wasn't a message I could see but the graphs seem to be still going as usual.
> 
> The graphs show changes in sales rank and so give some impression that sales are taking place.





heartland said:


> When you guys say you are checking your ranking, where are you looking? I have Novelrank set up but because it is inaccurate (at least based on my sales it is), is there another place that checks that or are you just checking the location of your book?


You can check the ranking on the book page, or (easier if you have multiple books) you can check at Author Central:
US https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/landing?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0
UK https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/landing?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0

Alternatively you can use novelrank.com, however, if you sell lots of books it tends to miss plenty of them, so the reporting of sales is inaccurate - better if you only sell a couple per day, say.

When the UK sales for my free book were not reported in March for 3 weeks and they finally were reported, the numbers were pretty much in line with before and after, so I guess they don't often miss any. Because I had weeks worth missing, it took Amazon a while to check and find them all - actual sales being recorded using a separate system, then being passed on to KDP Reports (or not, as now).


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## heartland (Jul 17, 2011)

Thanks for the info on Author Central.  I had not set that up, but am doing it now.

I have a few questions about setup but will search the forum first.

Incidentally, I wonder if Amazon having to freeze sales of self-defense items in the UK has anything to do with this freeze...


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Quote from: Tara Shuler on Today at 05:55:51 AM


> NovelRank is WAY off for me. It's only reporting about half as many sales as I've really had so far this month. And last month it says I made only about 10% of the sales I actually got


NovelRank captures the public ranking data directly from Amazon, so the ranking trends will always be accurate at the time they're captured. No one should have to worry about whether rank is being reported correctly or not. It is, insofar as Amazon is reporting it correctly.

However, the actual number sold is proprietary information. NovelRank cannot and does not capture that data directly from Amazon. Algorithms have been built to guesstimate the numbers sold based on the changes in rank.

What I've noticed is that up to about the first 35 copies sold in a month NovelRank is fairly accurate. Between 35 and 100 copies, there's a 10-20% discrepancy. Above 100 sold and the algorithms decay so much the results don't come anywhere near actuals.

NovelRank is a terrific tool for following the rank trend of your book in all regions from one site. And it's especially useful for following the trends of competitor books.

What I REALLY like to use it for is to follow the rank trends of books being advertised on sites I've thought about advertising on. I'll capture the rank of the book as soon as the ad goes up, then look again once the promotion is over, then again 7-10 days out to see what lingering benefit there may have been. By doing this for several books per venue I'm thinking about, I've been able to discount most of them because of lackluster performance.

Of course, you have to be savvy about how Amazon moves a book up and down the ranks. If you don't recognize that moving a book from a 1000 ranking to a 700 ranking is waaaaay better than moving a book from a 170,000 ranking to a 35,000 one, then NovelRank won't be of any real help to you at all. Education is the first step in any marketing strategy.


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## LiteraryGrrrl (Jan 24, 2011)

Okay, I'm listening to ModWitch. *Breathing, breathing*  

Won't it be great to get that little glut that comes in after a freeze? I'll celebrate that with some ice cream later.

Shana


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

I am so glad I found this thread (as well as questions on some loops I'm on) because I thought I'd just stopped selling altogether. Good to know it's a KDP problem.


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## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

I say we blame Daglish just because that's always fun.  

Phew! This is why I love kindleboards. I woke up to zero sales in over 9 hours, yet all my rankings were up so i knew exactly what to do. Run to kindleboards! 

This place is awesome. Now I can have my coffee and relax.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I'm with Ryne on this. It's either Skynet or the Matrix.


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## RobertY (Jun 24, 2011)

Mmm... just signed up for an account with NovelRank and it can't even find 2 of 4 of my books. Even after I typed the amazon number in and did a title/author search.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

ShaunaG said:


> I was really hoping when I woke up this morning it would be fixed. But I know I had at least one sale (if not more) that changed my novel ranking significantly and my sales havent changed. I think my short erotica may have sold too because my rank hasnt plummeted yet. This is so frustrating after the early week slump when the world went nutsy coo coo.


Shauna, I just want to say how beautiful and eye-catching your covers are. Not the right forum, I know, but every time I see them I think it!


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

Tonya said:


> Me too! Last night I was up to 75 total at 7 pm and now I'm suck....hmmmm.....I feel like I'm with a publishing house!


That made me laugh out loud!


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## Madeline Freeman (Apr 22, 2011)

My book just went on sale this morning, and since then, I know at least two people have bought it. I just thought that KDP had a lag time in reporting sales. Good to know that other people are experiencing this freeze, too. I hope it kicks in soon, though!


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Not to hijack, but where do you see this stuff on Author Central. I did the minimum over there and then haven't looked at it, but I don't see a forum or anything. Does anyone have something they use if for specifically?


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Now my author central is down, too.  Checking Nook sales just isn't the same.   Will go outside now and forget all about kdp...


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Incredible, how my ranking improves hourly, while KDP indicates that I haven't sold a single book since yesterday. 

Really gives me a sense of raw POWER.


----------



## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

J. Carson Black said:


> Shauna, I just want to say how beautiful and eye-catching your covers are. Not the right forum, I know, but every time I see them I think it!


Aw thank you! I take great pride in what my covers look like - I really appreciate it!


----------



## Lisa Lim (Mar 16, 2011)

KDP Reports is my virtual slot machine. Oh well, back to the real slot machine for me.


----------



## Rusty Bigfoot (Jul 6, 2011)

I guess CreateSpace uses different servers, as they seem to still be updating every so often...


----------



## mikelewis (May 31, 2011)

At least you can check rankings on AuthorCentral or in your own page...

The Smell of Magic short story went free yesterday on .com and is now #93 in all free kindle books... 

It went free today on .co.uk as well (after I reported the .com link as a price match).

A slight uplift in sales of the anthology as well.

Mike


----------



## KealanPatrick (Sep 5, 2010)

Glad I saw this. I've been having a record month since THE TURTLE BOY went free. When I saw that I hadn't sold a copy of anything since 11 p.m last night, I nearly had a stroke.


----------



## heartland (Jul 17, 2011)

Actually, if I remember correctly, last month around this time the same thing happened.  It is a few days before the monthly reports are coming out.  Maybe that is what is happening.  They are running our monthly reports so everything else stops.  

I know when I worked for corporate and we did certain accounting reports it shut down other parts of the system until we were done.

That makes the most sense to me.


----------



## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Glad I came looking... and that it's 'just' an Amazon problem.
Anybody an idea how long it usually takes to solve this kind of thing?


----------



## 25803 (Oct 24, 2010)

I saw a post on the KDP community that someone had emailed KDP and they responded that sales aren't reporting correctly and that engineers are working on it.  Good to know.


----------



## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Quote from: Tara Shuler on Today at 05:55:51 AM
> NovelRank captures the public ranking data directly from Amazon, so the ranking trends will always be accurate at the time they're captured. However, the actual number sold is proprietary information. NovelRank cannot and does not capture that data directly from Amazon. Algorithms have been built to guesstimate the numbers sold based on the changes in rank.
> What I've noticed is that up to about the first 35 copies sold in a month NovelRank is fairly accurate. Between 35 and 100 copies, there's a 10-20% discrepancy. Above 100 sold and the algorithms decay so much the results don't come anywhere near actuals.
> NovelRank is a terrific tool for following the rank trend of your book in all regions from one site. And it's especially useful for following the trends of competitor books.


Not to hijack, but yeah...I agree: Novelrank is not a great way to actually track book sales, but it's quite the useful tool for other purposes. I use it to track competing books (non-fic), and also follow a lot of books of varying ranks to give me a feel for what's going on at Amazon in general. I can see by looking at the "last book sold in X hours" numbers what kind of day Amazon is having. For example, during the big sale in June, I could easily see that books in the sale were selling fast, while everything else was tanking. It especially helps me to remain calm when sales are really slow, like on the 4th of July, because I could see that nothing was selling for anyone.

--Maria
(aka, huge numbers geek)


----------



## velicion (Sep 22, 2010)

Thank you, everyone for calming me down.


----------



## MeiLinMiranda (Feb 17, 2011)

I don't think mine are frozen; I've plummeted in rank.


----------



## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

I guess it's still broken?  Haven't had a sale in two days.


----------



## Dawn Judd (Jun 8, 2010)

Patrick Skelton said:


> I guess it's still broken? Haven't had a sale in two days.


Has to be. I'm now at #28 in the free kindle store and it shows I haven't had a sale since I checked it at around 5:00 yesterday.


----------



## jonathanmoeller (Apr 19, 2011)

It looks that way for me too - one of my books is #1 in its category in the UK as of this writing, but hasn't registered any sales since yesterday.

I feel bad, _very _bad, for whatever poor Amazon engineer gets stuck fixing this - 20 million crazed authors like us all emailing him over and over again...


----------



## Dawn Judd (Jun 8, 2010)

Ok, mine is starting to show a few sales on one book.  But not the other, which I know has had sales since yesterday, because it's rank keeps improving too.  It's a start.  It shows they are working on it anyway.


----------



## 40977 (Mar 31, 2011)

Just had a couple (literally!) of freebies trickle in as well.


----------



## BrianKittrell (Jan 8, 2011)

lol I had 2 copies on the free one post. I guess it only takes 2 downloads to move you from #3,000 to #120 in the free store? LOL


----------



## Consuelo Saah Baehr (Aug 27, 2010)

2 sales on one book have come in.


----------



## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

I just had 1 download on a free story show up. That story averages 50+ downloads per day.  Hmmmm . . .


----------



## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

1 from me.

Could be that they're slowly processing stuff - like for an hour or two, just to make sure the bugs are ironed out. Then they'll process everything else.


----------



## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Yep, I also had a few freebies trickle in on Amazon UK, but it certainly has been more than that over the last 20 hours or so.  However, the other books (not free) haven't updated, although the ranks would indicate there have been some sales.


----------



## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

I've had 3 sales! Whoo hoo!  

Under the circumstances, I prefer having no sales to having them report 3, since now my sales ranks are plummeting too.  Best not to check again until tonight.


----------



## _Sheila_ (Jan 4, 2011)

Sarah Woodbury said:


> I've had 3 sales! Whoo hoo!
> 
> Under the circumstances, I prefer having no sales to having them report 3, since now my sales ranks are plummeting too. Best not to check again until tonight.


I, too, have three sales. 


Sheila


----------



## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

So I went from a rank of 110,000 to 28,000... but I have no idea how many sales that is because none have shown up.

I really hope this isn't a fluke! Amazon wouldn't play with my emotions just to be cruel, right? lol


----------



## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Skynet? Matrix? ME? Hhaha. Don't be stupid.

It's me working WITH Skynet to manipulate the Matrix. Duh.


----------



## Kim Jewell (Aug 11, 2011)

I've had a couple trickle in, in the last few minutes.  I've not been through this before...  When this has happened before, is it an instant update once it's fixed, or a slow crawl back to update everything?  I should have seen more sales in the last 24-hours than two books...


----------



## R.G. Gilbert (Jul 19, 2011)

Half-Orc said:


> Skynet? Matrix? ME? Hhaha. Don't be stupid.
> 
> It's me working WITH Skynet to manipulate the Matrix. Duh.


David, I'll send you over the files on the plans for next month's Matrix manipulations posthaste. The Illusive Man wants to know if things can proceed "as scheduled."


----------



## Dawn Judd (Jun 8, 2010)

Mine are slowly updating.  A few more added every couple of minutes.  So you guys probably have more.  They just haven't showed up yet.


----------



## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

Dawn Judd said:


> Mine are slowly updating.


Same here. They just now started trickling in.


----------



## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

I am so jealous right now. Mine still havent started showing up yet.


----------



## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

Nada for me yet.  *hangs chin in hand*


----------



## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

It  hasn't shown any sales this morning.  Of course, maybe I haven't sold anything either.

Thursdays are usually slow for me then Friday through Sunday is fast.


----------



## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

Gosh, I hope it updates a lot more.  I've shown exactly ONE sale, on my bestseller.  I hope I've had more than that!


----------



## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

I think the sales we're seeing now are our actual present-time sales. I think they're still scrambling to add up the sales during the hours the system was down. Those will probably come in all at once. At least I hope.


----------



## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

EliRey said:


> I think the sales we're seeing now are our actual present-time sales. I think they're still scrambling to add up the sales during the hours the system was down. Those will probably come in all at once. At least I hope.


That makes sense. I'm going with that.


----------



## MattLaube (Jan 26, 2011)

I'm glad I checked here.  I changed my blurbs around and I just thought people must have hated them and stopped buying my books.


----------



## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Only 1 sale coming in. 
Seems to me the last time this happened, the correction was a slow one. Didn't happen all at once.


----------



## gatehouseauthor (Apr 22, 2011)

Much like everyone else, I have not shown a sale since yesterday afternoon.  My ranking has jumped from 80K to 24K... which pretty much happens every day with the sale of two books in the afternoon.  (No, I don't know why I keep getting 2 sales in the afternoon.  It started this weekend like that.)  So, I'm going to assume that I made those two afternoon sales, and they'll eventually show up in KDP.


----------



## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

I think they're updating according to when the sales came in. Comparing with the 'bumps' in the graphs of the individual books on Novelrank, they are now updating the sales from around 4-5 am.


----------



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Ryne, David, R.G.:  About this "Matrix" theory: Tell me again, what color pill was I supposed to swallow this morning?


----------



## 40977 (Mar 31, 2011)

EliRey said:


> I think the sales we're seeing now are our actual present-time sales. I think they're still scrambling to add up the sales during the hours the system was down. Those will probably come in all at once. At least I hope.


I think it might be this as well.


----------



## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

EliRey said:


> I think the sales we're seeing now are our actual present-time sales. I think they're still scrambling to add up the sales during the hours the system was down. Those will probably come in all at once. At least I hope.


Not for me. My sales rank made another good jump but still no change in my report. So frustrating. But I'm glad to see I'm making sales at the very least.


----------



## R.G. Gilbert (Jul 19, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Ryne, David, R.G.: About this "Matrix" theory: Tell me again, what color pill was I supposed to swallow this morning?


I don't know guys, should we tell him the real truth behind the pills?


----------



## Ryne Billings (May 15, 2011)

I had one US and one UK sale show up so far, but there should be roughly ten more coming in from the US.


----------



## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

gatehouseauthor said:


> Much like everyone else, I have not shown a sale since yesterday afternoon. My ranking has jumped from 80K to 24K... which pretty much happens every day with the sale of two books in the afternoon. (No, I don't know why I keep getting 2 sales in the afternoon. It started this weekend like that.) So, I'm going to assume that I made those two afternoon sales, and they'll eventually show up in KDP.


That's how it started for me. I would have a couple of sales at the same time every day. Then it grew to four sales and then seven and so on. I think it means Amazon is starting to promote you, and if your conversion rate is good, they'll increase their promotion. Yay for you!

Vicki


----------



## gatehouseauthor (Apr 22, 2011)

Victorine said:


> That's how it started for me. I would have a couple of sales at the same time every day. Then it grew to four sales and then seven and so on. I think it means Amazon is starting to promote you, and if your conversion rate is good, they'll increase their promotion. Yay for you!
> 
> Vicki


I'll keep my fingers crossed for that, then...  Visibility is our friend, after all!


----------



## velicion (Sep 22, 2010)

Still no sign of sales... A blue pill sounds like a good idea.


----------



## Lambert (Nov 12, 2010)

It seems frozen to me as well, all day. Hopefully when they get it fix and then we will all be happy with the results.


----------



## Dawn Judd (Jun 8, 2010)

EliRey said:


> I think the sales we're seeing now are our actual present-time sales. I think they're still scrambling to add up the sales during the hours the system was down. Those will probably come in all at once. At least I hope.


I think you may be right. I've only had one sale show up on the other book so far and I know it's had more sales than that since yesterday. The rest that have shown up are for my free book. Damn I wish I could see sales like that on a paid book!!!


----------



## Budo von Stahl (Aug 31, 2010)

My rankings on all my titles have been fluctuating for days with no reports; I emailed KDP on Monday, and they said they would get back to me by the end of today.  I wonder what end-of-day is there?


----------



## Philip Chen (Aug 8, 2010)

Budo von Stahl said:


> My rankings on all my titles have been fluctuating for days with no reports; I emailed KDP on Monday, and they said they would get back to me by the end of today. I wonder what end-of-day is there?


Their offices are on the west coast so 12:00 Midnight.


----------



## Budo von Stahl (Aug 31, 2010)

Philip Chen said:


> Their offices are on the west coast so 12:00 Midnight.


DOH! Not waiting up that late. Guess tomorrow will do. It's obviously system-wide as all titles, pen names, and genres are affected. Of course, just because someone msgs and 'says' they bought it...lol.


----------



## Nadine (Jul 10, 2011)

It's amazing to me that I get the break of a lifetime, a CNN article, and facebook is on the fritz and so is KDP.

Must.
Take A.
Breath.


----------



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I agree with Debora. Nothing to see here...move along....

And where did I put that RED pill...?


----------



## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Pills? I like the green ones. But be careful of the purples. Bad acid.


----------



## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Nadine said:


> It's amazing to me that I get the break of a lifetime, a CNN article, and facebook is on the fritz and so is KDP.
> 
> Must.
> Take A.
> Breath.


What's wrong with facebook?


----------



## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Nothing doing here, too. It's a, um, b-b-b-bad feeling.


----------



## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> I agree with Debora. Nothing to see here...move along....


With your hat on in your avatar, you remind me of a sheriff. I can picture you wrangling us all up and moving us away from this thread, as we grumble about our sales. lol


----------



## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

I started a thread about the Kindle Indie Bookstore that launched yesterday.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,79597.0.html

I wonder if that has anything to do with the freeze. I hadn't even heard about it until I went searching kdp for answers about the freeze earlier and came across the announcement!


----------



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Parrisha, I AM the sheriff. On another board, I am also Batman.

I can't decide if I'm an officer of the law or a vigilante.


----------



## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Parrisha, I AM the sheriff. On another board, I am also Batman.
> 
> I can't decide if I'm an officer of the law or a vigilante.


You can be an officer of the law by day, vigilante by night. You can cause problems for your own department at night, and then fix them by day. You'd be a hero. lol


----------



## IndiaLeeBooks (Apr 10, 2011)

PMartelly said:


> You can be an officer of the law by day, vigilante by night. You can cause problems for your own department at night, and then fix them by day. You'd be a hero. lol


I smell the makings of a new novel... wait, make that graphic novel and you've got a pre-sale right here.


----------



## gatehouseauthor (Apr 22, 2011)

IndiaLeeBooks said:


> I smell the makings of a new novel... wait, make that graphic novel and you've got a pre-sale right here.


I know three artists who would line up to pencil it... especially with that hat! It'd be a best-seller overnight...


----------



## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

IndiaLeeBooks said:


> I smell the makings of a new novel... wait, make that graphic novel and you've got a pre-sale right here.


lol, I'll see what I can do.


----------



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Know what I love about this place? I don't have to be creative at all! I just toss out some silliness, and you people all come up with ingenious plots and even design the book for me.

Cool! I'll be sure to remember you all in the Acknowledgments.


----------



## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Kim Jewell said:


> I've had a couple trickle in, in the last few minutes. I've not been through this before... When this has happened before, is it an instant update once it's fixed, or a slow crawl back to update everything? I should have seen more sales in the last 24-hours than two books...


Last time I saw a steady trickle of books (more than usual) as they caught up. I never saw a huge jump. Just now, I've seen 8 new sales since yesterday (first time in 4 hours I checked) and I figure I'm about 40 behind. They'll come in in their ones and twos as the day goes on.

However, I'm still angry. This is playing hell with my OCD (newly developed after signing up to KDP and starting a spreadsheet). I'll never know how many I sold yesterday -- arghh!


----------



## Budo von Stahl (Aug 31, 2010)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> I agree with Debora. Nothing to see here...move along....
> 
> And where did I put that RED pill...?


All those colors and more in a bag of M&Ms! Them's my happy pills! One color for the lawman in ya, another for the vigilante, and still more for the rest of you...wait, isn't that kind of a Jekyll and Hyde thing?


----------



## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

I've always wanted to post this comment. (and YES, I'm paraphrasing Harry Potter)

*ME TOO!*

Thanks for the opportunity.

Edward C. Patterson


----------



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Budo, I figure that by being a law-enforcement guy by day and a vigilante by night, I've got a permanent solution to the unemployment problem during the recession. I count this as TWO "jobs created or saved."


----------



## MaryKingsley (Mar 26, 2011)

D.A. Boulter said:


> Last time I saw a steady trickle of books (more than usual) as they caught up. I never saw a huge jump. Just now, I've seen 8 new sales since yesterday (first time in 4 hours I checked) and I figure I'm about 40 behind. They'll come in in their ones and twos as the day goes on.
> 
> However, I'm still angry. This is playing hell with my OCD (newly developed after signing up to KDP and starting a spreadsheet). I'll never know how many I sold yesterday -- arghh!


So I guess we'll never know our sales from yesterday or earlier today? Sigh.


----------



## Cheryl Bradshaw Author (Apr 13, 2011)

Oh KDP fairy...please come tonight and sprinkle everyone with our true and correct book sales!


----------



## Paul Clayton (Sep 12, 2009)

Well, it appears to be back up and running on three cylinders.  I see fewer sales.  Maybe I had a bad day.


----------



## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

My ranking went up and down a few times today so I do know there should be some sales... I don't typically check throughout the day, but this definitely had me eyeing it.

I still am not showing sales since yesterday 

~Caitie~


----------



## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Know what I love about this place? I don't have to be creative at all! I just toss out some silliness, and you people all come up with ingenious plots and even design the book for me.
> 
> Cool! I'll be sure to remember you all in the Acknowledgments.


lol I want a full page.


----------



## R.G. Gilbert (Jul 19, 2011)

Caitie Quinn said:


> My ranking went up and down a few times today so I do know there should be some sales... I don't typically check throughout the day, but this definitely had me eyeing it.
> 
> I still am not showing sales since yesterday
> 
> ~Caitie~


Yeah, I went up from 70xxx to 29xxx and I'm back down to 51xxx or so. Has to have been some sales in that time, but I've not seen any updates on KDP in over 24hrs. I'm sure they'll get it fixed soon so I'm not terribly worried about it.


----------



## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

OH, I'm not worried. Enough trustworthy people on this thread saying it's happened before and turned out fine.

That was more in response to the people saying their numbers were showing and so maybe everything was back on track.

I have *sarcasm*great*sarcasm* luck, so I'll be in the last set that gets to see if I sold anything this week LOL


----------



## drewschmidt (Jun 4, 2011)

So I got a response from KDP saying they are aware of the issue and working on it. But not to worry, all sales are still be recorded properly. So now it's 10:17 PM EST and we've started to see a trickle. I'll have to see what things look like in the morning. Yet things still don't seem normal yet.


----------



## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

I'm for going to bed and seeing if things are better in the morning 

I had a nice trickle there for a while that I interpreted to be actual sales between noon and six (PST), but they've stopped again, even though my rankings have changed again.  Just have to put it away!


----------



## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

My sales rankings, which have improved all day, are completely out of synch with the number of listed sales on the KDP "Reports," which haven't budged much. It's clear that they haven't begun to catch up in recording all the sales that have been coming in. 

This will take at least the overnight hours for them to sort out, but it's nothing to worry about.


----------



## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

Mine are back but they don't match my ranking, obviously they're still playing catch up. I hope!!!


----------



## R.G. Gilbert (Jul 19, 2011)

Yeah mine's not back but no worries. My ranking has steadily slipped back to close where I was before the freeze, though. 

I'm heading to bed, see you all tomorrow sometime. Cheers!


----------



## portiadacosta (Feb 28, 2011)

Some sales trickling in now, but I still think some are 'lost' for the frozen period. I don't sell that many, but it's less than my normal rate.


----------



## MeiLinMiranda (Feb 17, 2011)

Gah. I must just be having a sucky August, then.


----------



## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

Still nothing on my end and I know I had sales because I watched my rank go up and down and up so still waiting. I really hope when I wake up tomorrow there will be something.


----------



## CandiceHern (Aug 12, 2011)

New here.  Had to pop in when I heard there were problems with sales numbers. Mine have been horrible the last two days and I am hoping it's due to some Amazon glitch and not a true drop in sales.  I did get sales reported for Thursday but, like Wednesday, the numbers were less than half of my typical daily number. Does anyone have real info on whether or not the numbers we're seeing are accurate, or still screwy?


----------



## Ricky Sides (Sep 16, 2009)

Hi there folks,

This is just my opinion, based on my experience observing my sales over the past couple of years. I can't prove my opinion to be true.

Now that the obligatory disclaimer is out of the way,  I can tell you that my sales numbers as of 7:30 p.m. Wednesday night remained the same until about 4:00 p.m. Thursday afternoon. I gained approximately the same number of sales I routinely garner between 4:00 p.m. and my bedtime. I checked sales figures this morning and had gained the average numbers overnight. Based on past experience, it seems sales figures for the frozen period of time have not yet been added.

This next is just speculation on my part, but I think they'll be reflected in the _Prior six weeks' royalties_ report this weekend.

Have a great day,
Ricky


----------



## LeiaShaw (Apr 11, 2011)

My sales are still frozen but my ranking went up last night on one of my books. Anyone else seeing their normal numbers yet?

I'm hoping it's still amazon's problem and not just a bad week.

Leia Shaw
http://www.leiashaw.com


----------



## Joseph Rhea (Nov 9, 2009)

I have few enough sales right now (less than 5 per day) that my NovelRank "dips" are pronounced enough so that they always match an Amazon sale 1-to-1. As of this morning my Ranking dips are back to matching my KDP report, but I am definitely missing all sales during the period in question.


----------



## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I have new sales being recorded in KDP. However, I have a "hole" of about a day's worth of sales (17 or so).

My times match up to everyone else's. This is taking quite long to resolve, I might fire them an email.


----------



## Philip Chen (Aug 8, 2010)

I am so depressed by the sales or lack thereof resulting from this glitch, that I started cartooning again. At least we aren't DARPA, who just launched their hypersonic space vehicle and promptly lost it.


----------



## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

My sales started posting again, but they remain well below normal. Based on yesterday's rankings, I don't believe the system has caught up. If it has, then my sales have dropped off 30+% during the past 48 hours.


----------



## Lexi Revellian (May 31, 2010)

My takings haven't yet caught up with my rankings. 

I hardly like to suggest how much money Amazon would make from a brief glitch of under-reported sales...I've been thinking too long about devious plots for my novels, clearly.

Lexi


----------



## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

dgaughran said:


> I have new sales being recorded in KDP. However, I have a "hole" of about a day's worth of sales (17 or so).
> 
> My times match up to everyone else's. This is taking quite long to resolve, I might fire them an email.


New sales with hole: yup. Me too.


----------



## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Yup.  I woke up to typical morning numbers.  No catch up for the black sales hole from 4 pm Wed to noon Thurs.


----------



## lacycamey (Apr 25, 2011)

I have a few readers that I know purchased my book and my sales do not show it. This may sound silly, but I'm curious, will "those sales" be lost forever? Just curious!


----------



## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"My times match up to everyone else's. This is taking quite long to resolve, I might fire them an email."_

I suppose they could go to weekly sales updates. Everything would work.


----------



## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Yup. I woke up to typical morning numbers. No catch up for the black sales hole from 4 pm Wed to noon Thurs.


Sarah Woodbury, I noticed that you are from Pendleton, OR. My wife and I lived right down the road at Hermiston, OR for a couple of years. I worked at Umatilla Army Depot before they closed it. I loved that area of the country.


----------



## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

lacycameywrites.com said:


> I have a few readers that I know purchased my book and my sales do not show it. This may sound silly, but I'm curious, will "those sales" be lost forever? Just curious!


I'm wondering the same thing... yesterday my ranks were the best they've been in weeks.. yet my sales never reflected it


----------



## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

I found this in the KDP forum message board:

"This email from KDP support was received by another publisher about 0700 Seattle time:" (Aug. 12)


"Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

We're currently experiencing a reporting issue that's affecting the display of KDP sales information. While recent sales may not be displayed correctly, we've verified that sales are still correctly being recorded.

Our engineers are working to resolve this as soon as possible. The real-time notification is now fixed, and therefore your current sales are appearing accurately in your reports.

The notification of the missed costs are in progress, and should also appear in your reports soon.

We're sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and appreciate your patience."


----------



## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

destill said:


> I found this in the KDP forum message board:
> 
> "This email from KDP support was received by another publisher about 0700 Seattle time:" (Aug. 12)
> 
> ...


Excellent news. Thank you for sharing. )


----------



## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Franklin Eddy said:


> Sarah Woodbury, I noticed that you are from Pendleton, OR. My wife and I lived right down the road at Hermiston, OR for a couple of years. I worked at Umatilla Army Depot before they closed it. I loved that area of the country.


We love it out here--the small town part especially. Hermiston has probably grown even more since you were there--it's now the largest 'city' in Eastern Oregon with about 10 more people than Pendleton's 17,000


----------



## heartland (Jul 17, 2011)

destill said:


> I found this in the KDP forum message board:
> 
> "This email from KDP support was received by another publisher about 0700 Seattle time:" (Aug. 12)
> 
> ...


I wonder if we will somehow be notified when all the reports are completed updating....NOT. Would be nice to know so I could quit obsessing. LOL


----------



## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> We love it out here--the small town part especially. Hermiston has probably grown even more since you were there--it's now the largest 'city' in Eastern Oregon with about 10 more people than Pendleton's 17,000 Smiley


When we lived there about 40 years ago, Hermiston was only abut 5,000 people. Pendleton wasn't very big either. We have lived all over the U.S. but that was the best place we lived. It had excellent fishing, the climate was mild year round, and it was close to the mountains. The people were also very friendly.


----------



## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

I'll be in Oregon in November. How does that work for a meetup? 

BTW, when is Amazon going to get around to finding those lost sales? I'm still missing a bunch.


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## Martin Perry (Aug 2, 2011)

I'm OK with the current freeze. I can tell myself the number should be somewhere close to 100k.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

modwitch said:


> Where? And when?


Near Salem. The week of Thanksgiving.



> As for the lost sales, mine still smell like that 20 hrs or so is still missing, but we've been getting current sales just fine now. So today looks totally normal, and the previous two days are 30-40% short.


Yep, same here. Since I was on the tail end of an eReader Review promotion and sales and rank were doing great at the time, I'd like to see those sales appear in my summary.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

That sounds like fun!  We've got lots of Oregon folks on this board so as the time gets closer, we'll need to clarify.  It's a hike for me to come that far, but I might be able to do it.  

Sales still gone, but it seems we've averted the abookalypse.


----------



## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> we've averted the abookalypse


Now that is a new word. LOL


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Yeah. Things seem to be ticking over normally now, but I've almost a day-shaped hole in my numbers.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

Me, too.  Maybe that's the "donut hole" everyone's been talking about.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

It's a relief to know that the 104,642 sales I surely made yesterday afternoon are bound to show up on the charts at any time.


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

Frozen again. My rank is getting better but no new sales in hours.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

But still the black hole  . . . maybe as someone said they'll just appear on our 6 week report Sunday morning.  It would be more fun to see them tomorrow


----------



## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

Scary thought.. how would we ever know we're _NOT_ getting cheated?  MOST of the time lately my rank does NOT match my sales.

Well, let me clarify.. in the last 3 days not MOST the time... and I'm paranoid as heck! *shifty eyes*


----------



## Shaun Jeffrey (Jun 17, 2010)

My sales seem permanently frozen so I would never know the difference. Lol


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

I checked this morning and mine are still frozen for Amazon.  I am getting sales at Barnes & Noble though so I know people are buying my books.


----------



## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

I thought sales were catching up, but this morning on my Author Central Sales tab, it says "No Sales Info" with my books. And Current Sales Rank Unavailable. 

Anyone else seeing this?


----------



## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

I'm not seeing that, but the black hole from three days ago remains.  If it weren't for you all, I'd start to believe it was my imagination.


----------



## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> Author Central Sales tab, it says "No Sales Info" with my books.


Mine says the same thing.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Thank you, Franklin. I love when I'm not the only one.


----------



## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

The black hole remains for me, too, and ate into yesterday's sales as well.  Today it looked closer to normal, but not all the way. I don't know what happened, but it looks like it will take some time to get all our numbers back---if they're salvageable.


----------



## PMartelly (May 1, 2011)

J. Carson Black said:


> The black hole remains for me, too, and ate into yesterday's sales as well. Today it looked closer to normal, but not all the way. I don't know what happened, but it looks like it will take some time to get all our numbers back---if they're salvageable.


*shakes fist at amazon* they better be salvageable. lol
I think I'm one of those people that has become obsessed with checking my numbers. (sigh) I need to stop. tips, anyone? lol


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I think I'm one of those people that has become obsessed with checking my numbers. (sigh) I need to stop. tips, anyone?


Just have Amazon freeze your sales number for a week and you will stop checking.


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## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

Arrggh.  My July sales were double June and August was, in the first week, looking to be considerably higher than July.  Then on Monday, everything slowed, then the freeze came.  Normally, I would take a long-term view of this, but my book is today's Frugal Find on frugalereader. 

It was looking like I'd go into the sponsorship ranked somewhere around #20 on the legal thrillers genre list, with a sales rank somewhere between 5,000 and 7,500.  Instead, I'm at #38 on the list with a sales rank closer to 10,000.  I'm still delighted by every sale, but I really thought this sponsorship had the potential to push my numbers up just a bit.  Instead, I think I'll be lucky to end up where I was pre-freeze.

Not the end of the world, but what an ill-timed deep freeze.


----------



## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

Thanks, modwitch.  

I find the ranking thing dizzying.  My rank held steady for a while, then dropped, then rose all with no sales recorded (or at least reported) for most of Wednesday and Thursday.  Then, overnight I had five sales and woke up to a worse rank.  I know, I know, many secret ingredients go into the rank, but typically, for me, my rank would have been better after those overnight sales.

I may have to just throw up my hands and do something productive. Like, I don't know, write?  Or play with the kids.


----------



## karencantwell (Jun 17, 2010)

I don't watch my ranking, so I have no idea where I was ranked during the "freeze" but I still feel like I'm missing a full day's worth of sales on my reports.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

I agree with Modwitch about sales. The only thing we see that consumers don't see is our running sales total. A consumer doesn't know there is a problem. Rankings are changing, and that in itself indicates sales. I have purchased a few independent books from the new Amazon Independent page. No problem.

Nothing else in the Amazon system depends on up-to-date reporting in KDP. It's an extra for authors and publishers. Amazon could completely eliminate the daily reporting on KDP and it would have no effect on the rest of their business. I hope they don't, but from a systems perspective it's a throw-away.

If they can charge a consumer for a book, then they have a healthy record of sales.


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## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

I wouldn't be so sure the problems--whatever their root cause may be---aren't having some impact on the consumer side, Terrence.

I bought an ebook yesterday and got the order confirmation, but when I synced the android kindle app on my phone it wasn't there.  I went back to the product page and the message informing me that I had already purchased it was not at the top.  But, I checked my order history and the order had goen through.  Ended up talking to a very nice customer support person who found it in my archived books, but could not explain how it got there, beyond they were having some glitches.

I'm glad to hear the consensus is rank is not being impacted by the freeze, although my rank's been wonky.  But, amazon's having other issues.  The cloud thing crashed, too.

Growing pains, maybe.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Melissa,

That's new data. Good to know. I did check the books I bought all the way through Kindle download and it was all normal.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

I'd love to know if anyone's sales catch up, or if it's just going to be on the Saturday report (or next week, month, eon).  Daughter of Time is on Daily Cheap reads today--which is so great!--and I'd like to be able to distinguish between DCR sales and the catch up.  Looks like it's all DCR so far.


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

It's August and the only "catchup" you can expect is on hamburgers.  

Edward C. Patterson


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

@ Sarah: I'm having a good sales day, but I can't tell what was "catch-up" and what new sales. Both the rankings and the KDP sales chart are changing, and it's hard to tell which is leading which.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

If I were running the show, I think I'd segregate the "lost" sales and make a single end-of-month adjustment after Aug 31. Alternatively, I'd run a full month count after Aug 31, make sure it agreed with the payables files, then post it to KDP. The audit trail would be a lot cleaner. But they still don't call me.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Am I the only one still seeing ranking movement but zero sales?


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

Today I had two sales to UK so that is obviously not being affected. No sales to U.S. though since Monday.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

I'm seeing fewer sales than normal (though I have had a few).  I can't tell if that is a continuing problem with the reporting system, or if it's just Saturday *shrugs*.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

_Prior Six Week's Royalties_ changes tomorrow so it will be interesting to see if it shows any sales for the week.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

I just bought my most recent novel and it instantly updated my KDP.  So obviously it is working in real time again.  Of course, there may still be some sales that are in limbo.


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

EllenFisher said:


> I'm seeing fewer sales than normal (though I have had a few). I can't tell if that is a continuing problem with the reporting system, or if it's just Saturday *shrugs*.


Me too! And Saturdays are usually good for me.


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## AmandaBixby (Jun 21, 2011)

I usually sell between 10 and 15 books a day between my two titles.  My sales are way off this month, down by half so far.  I can put that down to summer, but as of right now, I have not sold any books for today and my rank is falling fast.  I have never had a no sale day and I've been published since May 23 of this year.  I hope they get this fixed soon because I don't know if my nerves can take much more.


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

I dunno either... got an email from KDP saying everything was kosher, but my sales are hardly moving at all. Rankings up and down. 

For those of you who were paying attention last August, how bad is it compared to the other months?


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Did you email them and their email was a reply? Or did they just email you? *email envy*


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Caitie:dont worry... It was their reply to my email asking what was going on...


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Weird. I had a couple of slow sales days, but now I'm having a banner day and much lower rankings, too. I of course have no way of knowing if the slow days were only that, or if they were slow _reporting_ days, and lagging sales have suddenly caught up.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

To put some real numbers to it, here are my sales for the week:

Saturday: 49
Sunday: 54
Monday: 43
Tuesday: 48
Wednesday: 21 (nothing after 4 pm)
Thursday: 25 (most [14] after 8 pm -- I was out for the day and didn't get home till 8.)
Friday: 46
Saturday: 54 (to 8:30 pm PDT)[Edit: 61 final count]

The last time I had less than 30 sales was in April. Previous daily August sales all between 40 & 58 inclusive. Thus, I suspect that the missing sales are still missing. I'm guessing I'm missing between 35 and 55 sales.

This had to happen just when I raised my 4 novels from $2.99 to $3.99. I wanted to record my weekly sales for comparison to see how it affected both sales and pay. This kinda put a spanner in the works.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Final sales total for the week as per daily checks (see above post) 298. As per weekly report: 298.

If the missing sales are added next week--assuming I have missing sales--the weekly report for week ending Aug 13th may change. I've seen it happen before. Sometimes the change occurred during the week, sometimes when the new weekly sales were posted.


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## Selina Fenech (Jul 20, 2011)

My sales haven't moved for about a week, but I think I'm just not selling anything.  
I'll pretend that it's the site problems though


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## LeiaShaw (Apr 11, 2011)

I too seemed to freeze for the week (could trickling in but not my normal numbers). I just checked my weekly report in the 6 week section and thought it would show more than the regular report like everyone predicted. It shows LESS. Ugh. I'm so confused. I have no idea what my numbers are. They aren't reflecting what my sales ranking is but I'm beginning to not trust that either.

Leia


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I'm beginning to wonder if _I_ broke KDP.  I uploaded two of my stories last week, and it took two days before they went live -- one on 8/8 and one on 8/9. Reading about this slowdown caused me some anxiety, let me tell you!

On the sales front, however, I checked this morning and I haz one.  Holy cow. What's that, 34¢? The first money I've made from my fiction. Dayum.

Now, just hope it doesn't A: get a bad review, and B: get returned. Ah well, we shall soldier on, eh?


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## LeiaShaw (Apr 11, 2011)

Whoops. Pay no attention to me. Calculated wrong. My weekly sales show more than my monthly. So there is still a hole of missing sales, which is consistent with everyone else. Sorry.

Leia


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

Yep, my prior 6-wk sales for the week ending Aug 13 shows my month-to-date report is still missing 200 Kinshield sales and 135 Wayfarer sales.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

My wife and I both had sales overnight so KDP does seem to be working.  However, I think we are still missing four days of sales.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

kcmay said:


> Yep, my prior 6-wk sales for the week ending Aug 13 shows my month-to-date report is still missing 200 Kinshield sales and 135 Wayfarer sales.


Ooh, clever. And encouraging that I'm getting paid for the sales, still. That's the important number. It looks like I'm short 63 sales at this point.


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

OT: Michael, every time I look at your sig, there's a new book in it! Way to go! Wish I was as prolific as you are.


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## kellymcclymer (Apr 22, 2010)

LeiaShaw said:


> Whoops. Pay no attention to me. Calculated wrong. My weekly sales show more than my monthly. So there is still a hole of missing sales, which is consistent with everyone else. Sorry.
> 
> Leia


This is why I will not bother to calculate (or should I say miscalculate). I'm encouraged by these reports, though, because I thought my sales had caught up, at least!


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

That's the part that I can't calculate:  reconciling the 6 wk report with the monthly report, since the weeks don't correspond to months and I don't check sales at midnight.  It doesn't look to me like my 6 week report has more sales/money than my monthly.  And why wouldn't they dump the sales into the monthly report if they calculated them, since they've done that many times in the past?  It feels like the first Gaga incident where everything crashed and people just didn't buy books (that was aTuesday--Thursday's sales of that week got dumped into Friday).  Ah well.


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## Cate Rowan (Jun 11, 2010)

I track my sales every day and I experienced the same freeze as everyone else on Wednesday and Thursday.

My weekly report shows the same number of sales as my daily manual reports. IOW, Amazon has not yet let on that there are any missing sales at all, even though I know there must be.

Not happy.


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## kCopeseeley (Mar 15, 2011)

It has definitely been a confusing week.  I keep careful track of my sales and when I checked my 6 week report, there does indeed seem to be a gap in my monthly sales report.  So I guess I'm glad they have that 6 week record as well, or I'd wonder if ANYTHING was being calculated correctly.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> It has definitely been a confusing week. I keep careful track of my sales and when I checked my 6 week report, there does indeed seem to be a gap in my monthly sales report. So I guess I'm glad they have that 6 week record as well, or I'd wonder if ANYTHING was being calculated correctly.


I wonder if those missing sales have vanished into the fog and may never be seen again.

Hey, maybe someone should write a novel called _The Mystery of the Missing Book Sales?_


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

I'm still seeing zero sales since the freeze.... My rank was down in the teens for a good chunk of one day, so I'm not sure how this is possible. 

So, I went and bought a copy to see if maybe I'd just not sold anything this week. It hasn't shown up. I was fine for a couple days, but now I'm kind of glaring at that end of the week report.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

I don't think the six week report is accurate re. sales---they must still be catching up.  The reason I can tell: 4 days ago I raised the price on one of my books from 99 cents to $3.97.  The six weeks report shows only one sale at that price. There should be a lot, lot more than that!


----------



## Doctor Barbara (Aug 17, 2010)

Between August 10th and 11th the KDP was down but it seems to be working since then.  Every morning and evening my numbers have changed.  
Hmmm......


----------



## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

J. Carson Black said:


> I don't think the six week report is accurate re. sales---they must still be catching up. The reason I can tell: 4 days ago I raised the price on one of my books from 99 cents to $3.97. The six weeks report shows only one sale at that price. There should be a lot, lot more than that!


That's what I was thinking, too. I've seen a steady increase over the past 10 weeks, averaging 25% per week. It's almost like clockwork. But this week, my numbers were _lower_ than last week. I suppose I could just chalk that up to slow sales, but I doubt that's what's going on.

Of course, someone of *your* stature having problems makes a lot more of a splash than my measly numbers, but it does mean that I'm not just wishful thinking, too.


----------



## Mary Pat Hyland (Feb 14, 2011)

Those who know they had sales that aren't showing, where do you find those numbers?


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

My sales have stopped again. Anyone else?


----------



## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

MichaelWallace said:


> My sales have stopped again. Anyone else?


oh good! I thought I was having a terrible morning!

Well... not good but you know what I mean.


----------



## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

My 6 weeks report matches the monthly tally so I know that's wrong because I saw my ranking change during the freeze. I finally emailed amazon asking if we're ever going to see those sales. We'll see if they give a satisfactory response. July's report isnt up yet so I'd hate to think we'd have to wait for August's report before we know our accurate numbers.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"It sounds like launching the cloud server (or something else we're not aware of) caused a mess somewhere in the backend. Anyone who has ever worked in IT knows those can sometimes take a while to fix. I don't think there's a conspiracy here, or an attempt to deny us sales. Just a systems snafu."_

This is what happens with computers. If there is a problem with Cloud, or any other aspect of the system, I can't see them devoting any resources to KDP reporting until Cloud is working right. If they have accurate sales data, they know they can always backtrack to correct KDP figures. But it's probably the lowest priority item on their list. KDP figures are derived from another source. It's that other source that is a priority.


----------



## Tom Junior (Apr 4, 2011)

My six week report shows two more sales than my "month to date" report. Which is confusing the heck out of me. I'm not sure which one is accurate  . I'm just going to hold on and hope things shake out soon.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

A friend bought my book 5 hours ago. The sale showed up (first one since the freeze) but now the rank just keeps falling and didn't even blip.

I give up. Just tell me when it's over.


----------



## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

The plot thickens. Now my six week number is changing. Week of 8/13 just went up by 1. At least it's the right direction.


----------



## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

modwitch said:


> Nope. Chugging. But you have monthly numbers updated, so we're probably on different servers. Did all your books freeze?


Yes, I had some sales overnight and then nothing on all of them all morning, although the rank was moving around.


----------



## IndiaLeeBooks (Apr 10, 2011)

My numbers have been back to normal for awhile but I did notice that the 6 week report seems to reflect what we lost in the black hole.  Considering my average sales and rank for the time where we didn't get numbers, the discrepancy is pretty close to what I assume was my total sales in that time period.  Hope that info helps someone!


----------



## Cynthia Justlin (Feb 23, 2011)

My sales have been wonky since the freeze to. I know I have to be missing numbers, and I know I have to have been selling these past few days since my average is very consistent, but those sales are not showing up on my reports. Very frustrating.


----------



## 40977 (Mar 31, 2011)

I went free minutes before the freeze started. (Seeing 33 free downloads for several hours before I knew what was going on was a bit of a mind**** -- "I can't even _give_ my book away!")

Definitely not seeing any of the freebies during the free time, and none of the uptick in Hot Ticket that should follow the ranking rise during the freeze period.


----------



## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

This is the response I just received, makes me feel better:

Hello Shauna,

I'm really sorry for the trouble you have had with the sales report not reflecting the sales appropriately. I checked with our technical team and was able to confirm that the reports are not reflecting in real time with all sales being recorded. However, it appears that the sales made for few books between Aug 10 to Aug 12, 2011 are still not recorded on our Month to Date reports.

Our engineers are working to resolve this as soon as possible. Also we've verified the sales and confirmed that the real time sales are correctly being recorded. Please review our KDP forums section for more updates on the reports issue being fixed.

We're sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and appreciate your patience.


----------



## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

Good to know, Shauna.  Thanks so much for posting that.


----------



## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Here is the part I like:

Our engineers are working to resolve this as soon as possible. 

Thanks for sharing, Shauna.


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## Alain Gomez (Nov 12, 2010)

Caitie Quinn said:


> I give up. Just tell me when it's over.


 

Yeah... I came to that same conclusion yesterday.


----------



## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

My sales seem to be coming through normal now.


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## Tara Shuler (Apr 24, 2011)

Unless it's just a wild coincidence that my numbers haven't changed, my prior six weeks earnings are exactly what they were last week, no update.

Guess it's still being ironed out.


----------



## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

I sent this to the fine folks over at KDP. I'll let you know when I get an answer:



> Hey guys!
> 
> I know you folks are having a time of it, getting everything back in order after, presumably, the Cloud Reader took everything and shook it up. I'm aware that whatever it was that spooked the system still hasn't been completely fixed yet, and I know you're working on it. So first I wanted to say thanks, and I'm confident that you'll have us back up and running ASAP. I'm not looking for any numbers, either, so don't worry.
> 
> ...


----------



## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

I emailed Amazon. I was still showing no sales until everyone was updated. Now I'm running real time.

I got a long email about how sales ranks don't mean anything and you can jump or fall based on other books.

I believe this. 100% ... except I was jumping by 20-37k...like I do for *sales* and dropping like 1k at a time after that...like you do when you're not selling.

I find it difficult to believe that for 3 days I had huge jumps like that and got zero sales. If I had zero sales for 3 days, I'd have a much, much worse rank than I have.

I wrote back explaining that my original question had been if my sales were updated and correct and explained the huge jumps.

RESPONSE:


> Hello Catie,
> 
> I apologize for the inconvenience caused.
> 
> ...


Here an entire paragraph breaking down the numbers I can already see... which is zero for the entire sales freeze time.



> Please note, the fluctuation in the sales rank is not only based on the sales
> volume of your book, it is also based on the sales volume of the other books.
> 
> If you are aware of a sale that hasn't been recorded; please write back to us
> with the "Order ID;" we'll have it investigated.


Really? SO: If I don't sell, I can still magically jump 37k like I did once on Thursday? Really? Because that would be the first time that happened to me. I know my sales info only goes back through June, but it's suspicious to me that it only happens when sales data isn't available.

I'll say it. I don't believe them. I believe sales were lost. I have so few sales as a newbie that every one counts (and I'm sure people feel the same way no matter their sales level) - but to me it's really interesting that I do 2-3 sales a day...and then, conveniently when their sales tracking is broken... zero.

You can try to talk me down, but it's just too coincidental.


----------



## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

Over on KDP, under Community and then Account Issues, then Sales Reports? here is a post from today from a writer that also wrote to KDP about this issue and the reply they gave:

Hello,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

We're currently experiencing a reporting issue that's affecting the display of KDP sales information. Our engineers are working to resolve this as soon as possible. While recent sales may not be displayed correctly, we've verified sales are still correctly being recorded.

We're sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and appreciate your patience.

So, posted by the writer today, saying they 'ARE WORKING TO RESOLVE THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.' Same response Shauna got.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I have a different issue.

My book lists at $3.99, which merits 70% royalties. That rate applies to all sales in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Germany.

However, for the past two weeks, a LARGE percentage of my Kindle sales -- about a quarter of them -- are being reported at the 35% rate.

Unless members of the U.S. military stationed abroad are buying HUNTER in extraordinary numbers, I wonder what's going on here. I emailed KDP, twice, and they assure me that they "researched" this and the sales are indeed being reported accurately.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?


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## heartland (Jul 17, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> I have a different issue.
> 
> My book lists at $3.99, which merits 70% royalties. That rate applies to all sales in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Germany.
> 
> ...


This is because people in other countries, other than those at the 70% rate are buying. This means your book is obviously appealing to places other than the US, UK, Canada and Germany.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> I have a different issue.
> 
> My book lists at $3.99, which merits 70% royalties. That rate applies to all sales in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Germany.
> 
> ...


Robert funny you should say that, the last few statements my 35% royalty on $2.99 has increased quite a lot.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Thanks Modwitch~

I was fine until the part where he tells me: The sales reporting issue which we had last week _has been resolved_, and sales 
are being recorded correctly.

That to me says my numbers should be correct. Honestly, there's no way that I've had 0 sales from the time they went down till sometime between bed Saturday and getting up Sunday. If he said we're still working on it, I wouldn't worry. But, if it's "resolved" then no, I really don't believe them.

And I wasn't worrying until last night when people started posting that everything was ok for them now. I'm really not typically a worrier (drives the worrier bff *nuts* how much I just shrug)


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"However, for the past two weeks, a LARGE percentage of my Kindle sales -- about a quarter of them -- are being reported at the 35% rate."_

My book went up in Nov 2010. Since then my foreign sales as a percentage of total sales show an increasing trend line. Now they hover between 15 and 20% after starting at 2%. I think Australia is considered a foreign market.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"I was fine until the part where he tells me: The sales reporting issue which we had last week has been resolved, and sales 
are being recorded correctly."_

Computers are very exacting masters. It appears the reporting problem has been solved. That means the sales are again being reported on KDP within a few hours. That is one specific problem that has been solved.

Restoring any sales that were not reported is a separate task. So, they can have sales being reported as they occur, while they have not yet restored sales that were not included last Thursday. In computers, these are two very different problems.

In tackling the two problems, one might think they had a hole in the dam and sales were being lost. Rather than looking for the lost sales, the first thing they did was plug the hole so the problem did not get worse. With the hole plugged, they can now go find what was lost.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Thank you all... I guess I should have included the long paragraph with my numbers but thought it would just make the whole thing too long. I can't get at it from work. That paragraph made it clear that those were my numbers. Period.

So, unless the CS rep who emailed me is misinformed or wrong, they're telling me that everything (for me at least I guess) is done and up-to-date....and that those HUGE positive jumps for my book don't have anything to do with sales.

I don't want to sound argumentative (bc honestly, that's not how I mean this), but if that's so, no. I don't believe that. My sales were getting better everyday and then just died for the rest of that entire week. At that exact moment? Really, are there coincidences that big? Yes. Do I think this is one of them... I highly doubt it.


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

I don't think they're quite up to date yet. I've gotten 4 sales added to my last week's  total today.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Ok, so from what everyone is saying (about their own numbers) I'm going to assume the wrong/misinformed CS rep situation... because I don't see how it could be right otherwise.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"I don't think they're quite up to date yet. I've gotten 4 sales added to my last week's total today."_

I had one added yesterday after the initial posting of the week's numbers. Today an additional six have been added.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

@ Caitie: It is very unlikely that you'd get a 37k rise in ranking without a sale. It could, theoretically, happen. I could make a more accurate guess if you told us your before and after rankings. If you had a 37k jump from ranking 337k to 300k, then I would say that you did not have a sale. One sale in that range would bring you up to something like 80k. If, however, you had a jump from 60k to 23k, that would almost definitely indicate a sale.


WRT previous week's sales: My sales report for last week has increased by 3 since I took down the figures when they first came up. So, does that mean that I should decrease my sales from yesterday by 3? Sigh, probably. I'll have to wait until this week's sales are posted to figure it all out, I suppose.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Yes, the 60ish to into the low 20s. I had several big jumps, but that was my biggest.


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## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

I can confirm that numbers are still being added, at least to my account. Yesterday I was at 87/3 for last week, as of five minutes ago I was at 89/3. Not a big jump, but something.

I track my sales daily (and try not to check hourly), and I'm very good at data analysis and trends. I should be seeing about 20 - 25 more books than I am, based on nearly 3 months of data.


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## jewishwriter (May 13, 2011)

I hear that many bit-shot computer outfits are busy uploading all software, etc. to the Cloud. Do you think this has something to do with the blackouts?


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## ShaunaG (Jun 16, 2011)

I think sales from the freeze are being tallied because I have "new" sales but my rank didnt improve. Only explanation I can think of.


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## 25803 (Oct 24, 2010)

modwitch said:


> Yup. For my books, they seem to be about halfway caught up.


I think I'm more like 15% right now. Must be on a different server.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Looks like I'm catching up in both month-to-date and weekly sales totals.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

The problem is, we have no way of knowing how many books actually sold during the freeze, right? So, how are you guys figuring out how much is correct in terms of catching up?


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## MSTHRILLER (Jan 20, 2011)

Has anyone noticed a higher rate of returns as well? I sold over 7000 copies last month and only had about 14 returns. 
To date, I have sold 5878 and have had 28 returns! Double of what it was last month. I find that highly suspicious.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Looks like I'm catching up in both month-to-date and weekly sales totals.


Yay!


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Whoo hoo!  9 books added


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Yes, new books added to the past 6 week tally.  But I can't tell if they're being added to the month-to-date sales report as well.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

I'm starting to catch up as well.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

MSTHRILLER said:


> Has anyone noticed a higher rate of returns as well? ...I find that highly suspicious.


I don't sell (enough to notice) anything at all, but I recall people pointing out that during the Great Kindle Hiccup, purchased books were sometimes going straight to the archive, and other assorted weirdness. I could easily see a dozen people being all confused/outraged and demanding refunds of customer service, or refunding the book and trying again, on their own.


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## 25803 (Oct 24, 2010)

A few more sales are dribbling in, updating the weekly report and increasing my monthly figures. A very good sign. Maybe by morning it'll be up to date


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## MSTHRILLER (Jan 20, 2011)

Thanks, that is reassuring. I hate seeing a lot of returns!


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

modwitch said:


> My two bestselling books have a high enough sales volume, and ranking was steady enough over those two days, that I can probably predict sales within 10%. So I have a projected volume of missing sales, and I'll look at how much today's totals exceed expected.


Thanks, Modwitch. That is what I presumed, just wondered if I was missing something in the reports. But that means I'm still way behind going by my rank during that freeze. It was catching up yesterday, then not today. Go figure. I certainly can't.


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

Strangely enough, my back-sales seem to be catching up but, considering my current rank, its not reporting real time sales again.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

The real problem is that it is hard to determine if it was just a slow week or bad record keeping by Amazon?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Amazon acknowledged they had a problem reporting to KDP, but they confirmed they had the source records necessary to fix it. KDP is not a necessary accounting record.


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

What they need, Deb, is your witches to do a little spellcoding   Get your twin witches on staff there.


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## heartland (Jul 17, 2011)

Just wanted to share...

I was just looking over my 6 weeks reports and it appeared that the total had changed.  So I opened the one I had saved on Sunday, and low and behold it had, in MY favor.  It was only another $20, but it looks like they are still working on crediting things.  

Hope this helps us to stay encouraged.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

Even at this hour (9:00 p.m., Central), my prior week's sales numbers are still trickling up. It appears corrections are still being made.


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

Mine are too. Way to throw off my spreadsheets, Amazon.


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

Thanks Modwitch for the reasoned analysis.


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

I totally dont get this. My sales took a nosedive last week and they have not recovered. I literally went from about 75 sales a day down to 6-8. I am not seeing any type of rebound. And when I email KDP they keep telling me everything is accurately tallied. I am frustrated beyond belief and do not know what to do. 

Suggestions?


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Libby,

This is horrible, but I'm glad I'm not the only one. Everyone keeps saying it's getting updated and they're seeing it. Maybe we're off in a corner at the end of the line together.

Can you hold my spot while I run and get us soda and chocolate?


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Don't forget the wine...white, please.


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Modwitch:

My sales ranks have gone way up too. I know August is supposed to be a slow month, but... really??


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## kellymcclymer (Apr 22, 2010)

modwitch said:


> That sounds like potentially a different issue. I saw a 40% decrease in sales Wed & Thurs, which is the same as a lot of people here. But sales since then have been normal (until today, when they seem to be inflated by the "catch up" sales).
> 
> What has happened to your sales ranks?


Don't forget that Borders' stores around the country are having going out of business sales. My Borders is finally getting to the discount that people will buy a lot (50-75%). They also have a sign that says they are restocking from their warehouse, in order to keep people coming back and not assuming they've seen all there is to buy.

They're also leaving the doors open, the lights low, and the AC off, which really reinforces the sense that "everything must go."

Sad. But it will be over soon, if that's what is influencing sales dips.


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## mikelewis (May 31, 2011)

My missing downloads have come through In the last hour..


Mike


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

It's pretty much across the board. I did expect a slowdown in 1 title 'cause I raised the price. But the others? Sluggish to nonexistent. All are categorized correctly, but I checked other authors' pages in my categories, and I'm no longer on the "If you liked this.." lists. 

I feel like I've been blackballed.


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

I've still got some old sales trickling in today.

Libby, that's really strange.  I hope you figure things out.  You must be so frustrated.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

My odd numbers continue:

Overnight my sales rank jumped from 94k down to 37k and still I"m showing only 1 sale since last Wednesday. This is pretty much what every day has looked like for me since the freeze. Roller coaster rank. No sales. No catch up. No current.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Caitie Quinn said:


> My odd numbers continue:
> 
> Overnight my sales rank jumped from 94k down to 37k and still I"m showing only 1 sale since last Wednesday. This is pretty much what every day has looked like for me since the freeze. Roller coaster rank. No sales. No catch up. No current.


Okay, Catie, let's do a little experiment.

At present your sales rank is 51,098. I just bought your book at 12:12 pm PDT. Now we shall see what we shall see. If nothing comes up, I'll give you my order number and you can use it to beat the Amazon Techs about the head and shoulders while you berate them, saying, "See? What did I tell you? Now go forth and discover the problem!"

On my front:

On Sunday, 3 of my 57 sales were added to my weekly report
On Monday, 16 of my 61 sales were added to my weekly report
Today, thus far, 7 of my 28 sales have been added to the weekly report.

I'm not going to subtract those from my daily totals until I see this week's weekly report. Then we see how the numbers add up.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

LOL - alrighty - I'll do it tonight if this one doesn't come up!

So, I went back and looked (I started tracking thursday), I have jumps of 20k+ at least 7 times.. I was wrong, there were TWO sales that came thru in that time. Both came through after Sunday morning.

I'm hoping beind new, and little I"m just last. I know 7 sounds like nothing to you guys, but it makes me sad.


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## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

I really think this issue is having a different impact on different titles, for whatever reason.  Like Libby, my sales rank is in a freefall. I am still getting catch up sales added to last week's total, but no new sales. Each "new" sale recorded has a corresponding increase in last weekMs total. Now, in addition, last week was my BEST single week ever, following a six-week upward trend. But somehow my sales have just stopped cold? Possible, I guess, but like Caitie, I tend to think that is quite a coincidence.  


I have full faith amazon will get it straightened out in the end but it is disheartening to watch my rank lose ground after several weeks of sustained growth.

This might just the cure for my kdp report addiction. I may go cold turkey just so I don't have to watch my book fall of the top 100 legal thriller ebooks. Already fell off the book list earlier today.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

All of what Melissa just said.

Honestly, I wasn't worried/concerned/upset/whatever adj you want to put on me, until the email telling me the issue around my title had been fixed.

I realize I'm a guppy in an ocean... and that my very few sales is probably not very high on their list. It was just that darn email....


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Caitie Quinn said:


> LOL - alrighty - I'll do it tonight if this one doesn't come up!
> 
> So, I went back and looked (I started tracking thursday), I have jumps of 20k+ at least 7 times.. I was wrong, there were TWO sales that came thru in that time. Both came through after Sunday morning.
> 
> I'm hoping beind new, and little I"m just last. I know 7 sounds like nothing to you guys, but it makes me sad.


Whyever would you think that 7 sounds like nothing to us? My first 8 months averaged 1 sale per day. The loss of 5 sales would have meant, and still means, a fair bit to me.

Have you checked your weekly sales report to see if either of those two sales were added to it?


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Aww thanks DA. That was encouraging 

Yes, all their numbers match up. it's the roller coaster rankins that don't.

Up until the day of the freeze, I was generally hitting 2-3 sales a day. Had 2 wed (one sneaking in right under the wire) 

I could just have run out of people who want to read me right then LOL - I'm hoping not!


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## Pnjw (Apr 24, 2011)

Catie,
I'm new on KDP and am seeing two to three sales a day also. You are correct when you say a ranking jump from 100,000 to the 30,000s means at least one sale. If I were in your position I'd be concerned also. I hope the test helps bring any issue to light.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Overnight my sales rank jumped from 94k down to 37k and still I"m showing only 1 sale since last Wednesday."_

If rank is jumping up, then you are making sales. That's the good news. The bad news is those sales are not being shown in KDP.

However, Amazon doesn't pay you from KDP. They pay based on their sales files, and those reflect what was billed to the customer.

If we look at the really big picture, if Amazon got paid, then we will get paid. All the data is there.

Can Amazon lose sales? No. Because they billed the customer. They have to reconcile their customer billing with vendor payments each month. If files like that don't reconcile, it's a big deal. They work it until they get it right.

Worst case? Sales are being made, but they are not getting to the ranking system. This would lower rank, affect best seller lists, etc. That would result in a loss of exposure. Payment would eventually be made, but opportunity would be lost.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

I got a few sales today so maybe they are catching up.


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## melissafmiller (Feb 17, 2011)

Me, too (finally), Franklin.  Since my last post, I've had a handful sales that did NOT also show up on last week's numbers for my 6 week total, so I think I am now caught up.

I hope that Caitie and Libby see the same in their reports.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

I bought Catie's book at 12:12pm and her ranking was at 51k.

At 4pm the ranking was at 59k, but I just checked and see the ranking has fallen to 33k. So, the ranking moved with respect to my purchase (or someone else's) at about 5 hours after the sale. I don't usually see such a lag between the recording of a sale and my rank moving. 

Now, the question is: has KDP recorded the sale?  Catie?


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

So, I was waiting to see if the ranking moved too.

The raking moved at the 5 hour mark.

I recieved 1 sale at just over the 3 hour mark.

So, either your sale showed at the 5 hour mark and moved the ranking and the 3 hour mark gave me one of my old sales.

OR the lag is.... wow and I'm starting to show.

OR something else someone else bought LOL

But thanks! I was hoping for like 1 hour and we see it happen so we could be sure.

thank you so much for experimenting.

also, feel free to return it now!


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Caitie Quinn said:


> So, I was waiting to see if the ranking moved too.
> 
> The raking moved at the 5 hour mark.
> 
> ...


The recording of a sale usually takes place prior to a shift in ranking. So, I'm pretty confident that my sale caused the shift.

As for returning the book . . . why would I want to do that? I'll just append it to my list.

Best of luck with your sales.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

8/16, 10 pm: Both KDP sales reports and sales rankings seem to have been frozen for hours. I'm not complaining, because I'm having a very good day, and I love looking at great numbers; but I fear what will happen when mathematical reality reasserts itself.


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## Nichole Chase (Feb 25, 2011)

Okay. I seem to be having the opposite problem from most of you guys. I have sales coming in, but my ranking is dropping. What on earth is going on? I went from 2 or 3 sales a day to one a day, and a few days with no sale. Friday I had 5 sales. (WOOT!) I'm really new so I expected days without sales so I wasn't too worried about the tracking of sales. However, I have gotten sales yesterday and today and my ranking is dropping. What on Earth? Could that be because they are adding every ones missed ones?

I have to admit, I feel like Caitie. A little fish in a really big pond. 

I guess at this point all I can do is wait it out and see what happens. Is this hiccup related to the launch of Kindle Cloud deal? That was my first thought after the freeze and I received the email announcing a couple of days later.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

*waves to Nichole* Hellooooo fellow guppy 

Ok, so one more person let me know they bought yesterday and it didn't show up. I"m just writing off August. I don't believe that all of us are up-to-date AND are still missing old sales, but there's no way to prove it or anything to do about it.


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

I picked up 8 sales overnight on a slower-moving title (about 5 a day normally), but when I checked the sales rank, it was exactly the same. My guess is that it was catch-up from a few days ago.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I appear to have had a burst on Saturday the 13th (usually a slow day for me) which didn't correlate with rankings that improved that much, so I can only assume that was the catch up.


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## ThatGurlthatlife (May 10, 2011)

I wasn't going to reply to this post at first because I've been selling well...all throughout August, but the other night I took the time to read the post, and saw that some people had mentioned their 6 weeks reports changing. I keep an excel sheet as soon as my 6 weeks reports come out now because I found a discrepancy a couple months ago, and haven't been too sure of reporting since then.

So two nights ago i went and did a comparison and low and behold $60 worth of sales had been added to last weeks report. I Didn't even notice that is was missing!!!! And then I check again last night and another $5.18 was added to last weeks report. Checked this morning and an additional $23 has been added. WTH...

I'm freaking out now, because how do I know what I really sold!? They could be still jipping me out of a few hundred bucks and I'd never know. I've been selling about 20-30 books a day for the month of August, so I never really saw a lag....even on the days people were saying KDP was frozen, I had sales coming through every hour at least. There was one day last week that I sale popped up in the UK and then disappeared...not as a return...it just wasn't there anymore... i didn't give it much thought since I barely sell anything there for now anyway...

I don't think there is anything we can do...I guess I'm just venting...


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## Nichole Chase (Feb 25, 2011)

Ah aha. I didn't even think about it being older sales finally rolling. Teaches me to worry about my sales when I should be sleeping.

And honestly, I really did expect to have slow days with zero sales. I'm new. I figure even those days where I get 1 sale is just super. I'd love to making big sales, but I'm in this for the long haul and I know it takes time. 

-Guppie


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> I'm freaking out now, because how do I know what I really sold!? They could be still jipping me out of a few hundred bucks and I'd never know.


This is true for any publisher you might go through. I think it's less true for Amazon, because as others have pointed out, they don't have to tally up receipts from a gazillion outlets, so errors are less likely to happen. But there is no way of being absolutely certain that you're being paid for all your books, no matter how you publish. It's something we have to take on faith, for the most part. I'm just glad to see all the tallies on my reports going up.


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## D/W (Dec 29, 2010)

Caitie Quinn said:


> Ok, so one more person let me know they bought yesterday and it didn't show up. I"m just writing off August. I don't believe that all of us are up-to-date AND are still missing old sales, but there's no way to prove it or anything to do about it.


Caitie, if you could get order numbers from those buyers who have contacted you, perhaps you could have Amazon check into why those sales aren't showing up in your account. Surely, they could track those specific sales with such information.

I hope the problem gets resolved. That would be frustrating!


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"I'm freaking out now, because how do I know what I really sold!? They could be still jipping me out of a few hundred bucks and I'd never know."_

Let's take the more general case. How do you ever know? How did you know last month?


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Thanks Dreamweaver.

The second person was a stranger who wrote me a fan type thing. I wouldn't be comfortable doing that. I've decided not to look at my numbers until the end of month and then just call it good.

I have a friend that decided to continue my daily tracking for me so data isn't lost LOL - but I"m just going to forget about the numbers for august.

Nichole: GUPPY POWER!


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Modwitch: I did check my 6 weeks, and what do you know... there were about 12 sales added there that never showed up (still haven't) in my Unit/Month sales. Not as much as I would have liked, but clearly an improvement.

Also, since I've been whining here, there has definitely been a pick-up in sales. 

Hmm... makes you wonder, don't it? Anyway, thanks everyone, for the moral support. I think/hope the crisis has passed.


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## vivinthevalley (Aug 18, 2011)

Do you have to bring this to Amazon's notice to get this fixed?  And how long is the longest "blank" period of no sales?

I'm a new writer, I posted my book in mid-July, and was having small but steadily growing sales - I started out with one a day, then two, and so on.  I was up to about four a day by the last day of July and then ... poof, nothing.  It still says I have absolutely no sales, and it's been 18 days.  Now, like I said, I'm new, so it's highly possible I've had zero sales, but if I haven't been tracking my ranking, how would I find out for certain?


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

modwitch said:


> Given your current sales rank, it would suggest you haven't had a lot of sales recently. You might try buying a copy and see if it shows up as a sale.


I think 240,000 translates into very, very few sales. My MG fantasy sells almost nothing (I actually think it's a pretty good book, but never mind), and this month has sold all of 3 copies and those all came in the first week of the month. It has a rank of 202,383 at this exact moment. I'm sorry to say that 243,000 means you've sold fewer than three copies. Sorry.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Now, like I said, I'm new, so it's highly possible I've had zero sales, but if I haven't been tracking my ranking, how would I find out for certain?"_

It would take an independent audit to find out for certain. So you're not going to know for certain. None of us are. In general terms, we rely on the integrity of Amazon's internal systems and their outside auditors. However, taking 30 seconds per day to jot down a few numbers gives a pretty good picture of what is happening, and it provides a history that reveals valuable patterns and trends.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

ThatGurlthatlife said:


> So two nights ago i went and did a comparison and low and behold $60 worth of sales had been added to last weeks report. I Didn't even notice that is was missing!!!! And then I check again last night and another $5.18 was added to last weeks report. Checked this morning and an additional $23 has been added. WTH...


Hopefully, they'll eventually correct them all. Mine still haven't budged. It's like there's the better part of a day's sales still missing. I appreciate everyone sharing info here, btw. Meanwhile, working like a fiend on that next book.


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## vivinthevalley (Aug 18, 2011)

Thanks for the responses.  I'll have my husband buy a copy when he gets home tonight and see what happens.  I'm starting down the road to learn marketing, so hopefully that will help.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

N. Gemini Sasson said:


> Hopefully, they'll eventually correct them all. Mine still haven't budged. It's like there's the better part of a day's sales still missing. I appreciate everyone sharing info here, btw. Meanwhile, working like a fiend on that next book.


They added sales to my previous week's sales on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, but nothing since then. Total added, 26, which gives me an average of 36 sales per day for the two problem days. Now, I wonder, what are the odds that the two day period with the lowest number of sales since the end of April would be the two days when Amazon froze? Granted, I've had a couple days in the low 40s both before and after the freeze (subtracting the 'corrected' sales from my Sunday, Monday and Tuesday daily totals), so 36 isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. Still, quite a coincidence.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Look out DA. When I asked if it was an "interesting coincidence" no one agreed 

~Caitie, who is still not looking at her august numbers....ever, ever, ever, ever again


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## Libby13 (Jul 31, 2011)

My husband gifted two copies of my book last night and they haven't shown yet.  Not worried, I'm sure this type of stuff happens from time to time.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

sibelhodge said:


> For the last 2 days my reports have been suspect again. Anyone else still having this?


Uh-huh. Same here.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Yeah 1 sale overnight when it's usually a minimum of 5


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

Maybe sales are just bad so that is why sales are not showing up?  That is a possibility and there is nothing wrong with Amazon reporting.


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

sibelhodge said:


> For the last 2 days my reports have been suspect again. Anyone else still having this?


Yesterday one of my books sold only 60% of what it had sold the day before, and 50% of what it had sold Monday, yet its ranking hasn't suffered much. I'd like to think reporting isn't fixed yet, but the other books' sales are consistent.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

@Franklin

Two of my titles have very inconsistent sales, but one is extremely steady. 

When the sales of the steady one don't show up, usually that's an indication of a reporting delay. There have been several this summer. Sometimes there is a note in Author Central (like there was on a few occasions in June or July), sometimes there isn't (like during the wide-spread reporting delays on the 10th/11th of this month).

People post here to check whether its just a blip in their own sales (which happens) or whether others are experiencing the same thing.

If it's just me and Sibel and a couple of others, I will write it off as a blip. If it is lots of people (like last week), then something could be up.

That's all.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

dgaughran said:


> Yeah 1 sale overnight when it's usually a minimum of 5


Mine were about half the normal. Errrgh. (Where's the emoticon for throwing hands up in the air?)


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Overnight for me (Sweden) is evening in the US. It's usually a busy time for me.

Of course, the other way to look at that is that my most effective promo strategy is to go to sleep.


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## karencantwell (Jun 17, 2010)

sibelhodge said:


> For the last 2 days my reports have been suspect again. Anyone else still having this?


My sales have definitely dipped significantly over the last three to four days and I have periods of no sales at all which is unusual. And I still don't feel that my sales from the shutdown on the 11th have been added.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

sibelhodge said:


> For the last 2 days my reports have been suspect again. Anyone else still having this?


Yes, Sibel, the last two days (17th, 18th) have been terrible for me. I get a trickle, but I suspect something is happening again. I never did get the made-up sales I expected, but I was making my average again until the day before yesterday. And my rankings have improved. They are not reflected in the sales numbers.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

Haven't had a single sale in the US today and I've just noticed they've changed the reports page too!


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## 25803 (Oct 24, 2010)

It may be a server thing again.

While I wish my sales were higher, they seem consistent with their rankings.  But when everyone's lost sales were starting to play catch-up on the weekly report, mine didn't start until a day or so later and didn't finish changing for an extra day or two.  I'll post again if my rankings don't match the reporting later today.  People always said I was a little slow


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## Sally C (Mar 31, 2011)

I released my first KDP book on the 10th August, and am registering 18 sales (woo!) but I have no idea how you even work out if KDP is frozen or not... is it to do with sales rank correlation? sorry for the stoopid question, trying to learn here, honest!


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"My husband gifted two copies of my book last night and they haven't shown yet. Not worried, I'm sure this type of stuff happens from time to time."_

It's not recorded as a sale until the recipient clicks and downloads the gift.


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## Ann Chambers (Apr 24, 2011)

I'm not showing any sales since yesterday afternoon - but my rank is the same. And when I clicked KDP for the report - the UK and DE links are missing. I think they are working on the site or something right now. Glad it's not just me.


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

I talked to a tech person at Author Central because I was having trouble uploading a new product description (still not fixed, sigh).

She said there are quite a few technical problems with the Kindle pages, and that efforts were being made to correct them all. She didn't specifically mention the sales reporting, but I got the impression the problems were more widespread than just product descriptions.

FWIW


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"I'm not showing any sales since yesterday afternoon - but my rank is the same. And when I clicked KDP for the report - the UK and DE links are missing. I think they are working on the site or something right now. Glad it's not just me."_

UK and DE are now in a little drop-down menu on the left side of the page.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> I talked to a tech person at Author Central because I was having trouble uploading a new product description (still not fixed, sigh).
> 
> She said there are quite a few technical problems with the Kindle pages, and that efforts were being made to correct them all. She didn't specifically mention the sales reporting, but I got the impression the problems were more widespread than just product descriptions.


My wife had changed her author name after her first book, but I couldn't get the name to change to her pen name. So I contacted them and they told me to change it in KDP. I already had done that once so I did it again with the same result. So I e-mailed the again and they fixed the problem for me.

So obviously they are having problems.


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## D/W (Dec 29, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> UK and DE are now in a little drop-down menu on the left side of the page.


Thanks for that info! I see the drop-down menu now.

They have been instituting _a lot_ of changes at Amazon lately-"Look Inside" for Kindle (as imperfect as it is), the new indie section, Kindle Cloud Reader, etc.-so I suppose glitches are to be expected. I just hope they get everything running smoothly before all the anticipated changes/events coming soon for Amazon/Kindle-public library lending, new Kindle device(s), the Amazon tablet, and the upcoming holiday sales season!


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Sally C said:


> I released my first KDP book on the 10th August, and am registering 18 sales (woo!) *but I have no idea how you even work out if KDP is frozen or not*... is it to do with sales rank correlation? sorry for the stoopid question, trying to learn here, honest!


First: Congrats on your sales. It took me 30 days to get 18 after I first published.

Next: It's not a stupid question. If you are averaging a fair number of sales per day (in my case about 50) and suddenly there are no sales reported for 24 hours, you are likely not amiss in figuring that something is wrong--might only be with you and hey, who knows, people may have stopped buying your book(s). If during the 24 hours of no sales your rank does not go down and at times jumps up, you can be pretty sure that something is wrong. When you bring this up on a forum like KB and other authors say the same thing is happening to them you know something has gone wrong.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

Sounds to me like amazon is tinkering with KDP like it's a dicky carburetor...


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

Ryne Douglas Pearson said:


> Just your great verbiage there made me LOL


I'm channeling my Inner Englishman today.


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

J. Carson Black said:


> I'm channeling my Inner Englishman today.


Channeling? Hah! I loves me some puns.


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## Sally C (Mar 31, 2011)

Thanks for the clarification, D.A. And a big woo to you on your sales!


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> If you are averaging a fair number of sales per day (in my case about 50) and suddenly there are no sales reported for 24 hours, you are likely not amiss in figuring that something is wrong--might only be with you and hey, who knows, people may have stopped buying your book(s).


I usually have a lot of sales on Friday, but I have had any so maybe it is broken again.

My wife got one from UK though.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

It's not KDP, but I noticed today, watching the slow decline in sales rank for my titles in Author Central, that there's no rank recorded for the 13th. Every day up to the 12th I can see how badly I was doing, every day since... not on the 13th, though. It's the same at .com, .co.uk, and .de.

Definitely some wonkiness afoot...


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

ToniD said:


> Channeling? Hah! I loves me some puns.


I didn't think of that! Good one, Toni!


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## The world would be prettier with more zebra strip (Apr 20, 2011)

This might explain a few things I guess.

Has anyone else had their rank move up only a few digits but not shoot back down like a sale? But it's ranking starts moving like an even slower iceberg? 

Could this be the system adjusting?

It only does it on UK for me, US seems to do it's usual jump then back to the ground in a day.

I'd love for those changes in rank to be sales, but I haven't seen any extra sales in the UK for some time according to my reports.

Ugh, this is annoying.


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## sinclairbrowning (May 16, 2011)

Whew.  I thought I was the only one stuck in Siberia.

Reading the posts about stalled sales has made me feel ever so much better.  Thanks all!


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Numbers are around 10% of normal today, after being 50% of normal yesterday. I really hope it is reporting delays rather than the readers of America simultaneously deciding to stop buying my books


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## Saffina Desforges (Dec 8, 2010)

The scary thing is, we'll never know.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

I wrote to KDP about lack of sales being reported and said that if there was a problem that they should consider writing to authors to let them know.

This is their response.

Hello Mel, We use the Amazon Bestsellers Rank to show how items in our catalog are selling. Items are ranked within their product category only, so a book ranked at No. 1 is the bestselling book at Amazon.com, but may not be the overall bestselling item. The Amazon Bestsellers calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.com. In order to keep these lists fresh, useful, and up-to-date, recent sales are weighted more heavily than sales that occurred in the distant past. For the Kindle Store, the Amazon Bestsellers Rank is divided into Free and Paid. Items with a Paid rank have a value greater than $0.00. Items with a Free rank have a value equal to $0.00. The sales rank listing is working as designed and no emails were sent out since there is no issue with this feature. I hope this helps.


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## ndrake (Apr 20, 2011)

I noticed it was down as well.  When it came back up it had a new drop-list feature for the markets.  I also found I'd sold 3 more books so that was a nice surprise!  Still trying to get some real traction in sales, but hopefully it will come eventually.  

N


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## mikelewis (May 31, 2011)

Mel

I got exactly the same response when I emailed them to ask why my short story that was free but is now 99c was showing with a sales rank in the free store....

Obviously the default reply of the day!

Mike


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

The new story I uploaded on Thursday still hasn't shown up in any Amazon store yet, even though KDP lists it as life. I haven't seen any sales in a few days either, though that could be just a slow period.

I hope that my book will at least show up soon.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> The new story I uploaded on Thursday still hasn't shown up in any Amazon store yet, even though KDP lists it as life. I haven't seen any sales in a few days either, though that could be just a slow period.
> 
> I hope that my book will at least show up soon.


Maybe it is there, but you can't find it for some reason. Perhaps the title or author is wrong. Try searching for it using different things and maybe you will find it.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

mikelewis said:


> Mel
> 
> I got exactly the same response when I emailed them to ask why my short story that was free but is now 99c was showing with a sales rank in the free store....
> 
> ...


Hmmmm...

Well I've just spent 13 solid hours on here marketing and rec'd 7 sales, instead of the 60-70 odd I usually get, and most of those were for the new book!


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Franklin Eddy said:


> Maybe it is there, but you can't find it for some reason. Perhaps the title or author is wrong. Try searching for it using different things and maybe you will find it.


I tried all sorts of searches, but it didn't show up. And when I click on the "see book in Kindle store" tab at the KDP bookshelf, I only get a 404.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

I'm not sure how many servers host our KDP records and books. But if we are on different servers, we will see different results as Amazon propagates program changes and file updates through the network. That would explain why some people see no sales, others see 50% of normal, and others see normal. The servers also pass the workload back and forth to keep it all balanced. It's beautiful from the inside, but a bit odd when looking in from the outside.

And algorithms? Some algos have to grow. They have to build a history of data if they are developing data that never existed before. So changes in rank may start at zero, then gradually increase as the algo builds it's history and deploys it in the calculations. This is especially true if the algo is heavily weighted to recent sales. But all this is speculation since they still don't call.


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## Kimberly Spencer (Apr 10, 2011)

Does anyone else's six week report look a little screwy? I've been writing down my daily sales, and my report seems to be 8 sales short.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Mine certainly does look screwy.

For one, it says the Average List Price for my book is $3.01, when the price has been set at $2.99 the whole time.

My sales have been running very low for three days now. Amazon didn't reply to my email, but it sounds like the problem is pretty widespread so I will hold tight.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Kimberly Spencer said:


> Does anyone else's six week report look a little screwy? I've been writing down my daily sales, and my report seems to be 8 sales short.


My report for the week ending Aug 20th was 26 short of the daily totals I counted. That, however, did not surprise me as my report for the week ending Aug 13th increased by 26 sales during Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of this week.

Thus, I figure, 26 sales that had not been credited to my account (either weekly or monthly) during the blackout of Aug 10th/11thwere credited to me during the following week. It all added up. Had I not been aware of this increase in my report for Aug 13th, I'd probably be quite unhappy right now. [Actually, I'm still somewhat unhappy, for I suspect that not all my sales were counted for either report. There be screwy things happening at Amazon lately and I figure they lost some. But that's something I'll likely never know, so it has little bearing on your question.]

Could this have happened to you--an increase in sales for the previous week which you counted as the present week for dailies? Did you make note of your sales from the report of Aug 13th, and check it against what exists there now?


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

That doesn't exactly fill you with confidence.

What I would like in a reply from Amazon in these cases is something a little clearer like this:

"We had a reporting delay which didn't post some sales to your account on August 16th between 5pm PST and 11pm PST. In your case 26 sales for MY BEST BOOK were recorded by our system but not posted to your account. This sales were posted to your account this morning and you can see them if you look at your Prior Six Week's Royalties Report. They will also be reflected in your monthly sales report when it is generated and your royalty check when it is issued."

Would that be so hard?


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

Even Barnes & Noble reporting doesn't seem to be correct.  I haven't had any sales from them for a few days.  Then this morning I checked my monthly sales and it showed I actually had a sale that hadn't been reflected in the daily reports. 

Do you think that Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on wonky sales reporting?


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

Mel, 

I got almost the exact same thing when I began my emails with them 1.5 weeks ago. They're either company-lining this, the reps have NO IDEA what's going on, or they're so dug under their copying and pasting to just respond.... or a little bit of all three

annnnnndddd when I pushed I got exactly the message sibelhodge did.

And yet, sales died the day of the first freeze, never caught up and my ranking jumps never match the numbers by about 1-to-3.

I'm still not checking my numbers, but my friend emailed me and said "Nothings changed, except that your ranking wasn't listed for at least an hour Thursday." Which made me go, "huh?" and also "Why are you now obsessed with these numbers" ---> His response was "I hate unfair things and I hate broken things." 

I think my amazon account has become his version of ESPN


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

My message from KDP:

I'm sorry for the the confusion.

I looked at your reports and can confirm that the issue with the sales reports has been fixed and there are no discrepancy in sales getting recorded on your account as well as our system.

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

Did I answer your question?[/i]

It didn't answer the three questions I sent, let alone the one they referred to.

I don't mind if they are stonewalling and things will return to normal and those sales will appear somewhere. Companies stonewall all the time while they fix stuff. I don't care as long as it gets fixed.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Wise words.

The only thing missing was "...and get back to writing."

Man this rewrite is a slog


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

This book I'm working on, I think it will kill me. It's already turned half my hair gray. I started it in 2006. I "finished" it the first time in 2009 after walking away several times - one time for 10 months swearing to never touch it again.

This _should_ be the final pass. It was a classic newbie mistake when I first started - I didn't realize the complexity of what I was undertaking - seven main characters, a whole host of minor ones, omniscient PoV, historical - seven separate narrative strands to be managed and gradually woven together, all with the backdrop of an unknown war in an unfamiliar location...

If I had known in 2006 what I know now, I probably never would have undertaken it, but I am close to the finish line now. A month or two of work on the final pass and it will be ready. I think. (I hope.)


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

This could all be solved if Amazon adopted monthly reporting rather than daily.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

But then where would we get our fix?  Pubit just doesn't do it for me


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> This could all be solved if Amazon adopted monthly reporting rather than daily.


EEEEK! BITE YOUR TONGUE, SIR!!!!

 Maria


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Not quite frozen, but not really moving, either.


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## Kimberly Spencer (Apr 10, 2011)

Could this have happened to you--an increase in sales for the previous week which you counted as the present week for dailies? Did you make note of your sales from the report of Aug 13th, and check it against what exists there now?
[/quote]

Could be. I lost track of those sales when Kdp froze last week.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

it appears that most of us have a clogged drain.

Forecast: plenty of sludge with occasional clumps of hair.  

"We hope we have cleared up any questions you may have had or ever will have had in the future.  Thank you,

KDP."


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## Usedtopostheretoo! (Feb 27, 2011)

I noticed someone else had a funny price listing. The Kindle version of my book is now available at the bargain price of $5.99 according to Amazon. I checked KDP, and I'm still listed at $3.99, where I want it. Anyone else seeing random price changes? If I'm missing a thread on this topic, please slap my hand. I imagine Amazon won't compensate me for this "error." Haven't sold a book as of last checking around noon.


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

Steven, I checked your book page and it's listed at $3.99. Hopefully just a hiccup for you.
Amazon really needs to hire a good plumber. Or at least pick up some eDrano.


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## Usedtopostheretoo! (Feb 27, 2011)

Thanks, Remi. I just checked again, and it's back to $3.99. Very strange.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"For your reference, if the order is placed using a debit card it can take up to 2 to 3 days for the sales transaction to show up on the "Reports" section of your KDP dashboard."_

This is the most interesting thing so far. If someone is looking for KDP to reflect a specific sale they have verified, they have to know if it was a debit card purchase. Otherwise there will be no correlation to the time of purchase and the time of posting to KDP reports.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Steven Konkoly said:


> I noticed someone else had a funny price listing. The Kindle version of my book is now available at the bargain price of $5.99 according to Amazon. I checked KDP, and I'm still listed at $3.99, where I want it. Anyone else seeing random price changes?


I haven't actually seen a product page with a wonky price on it, but earlier I saw a search page listing my $1.95 Kindle edition like a paperback(!), with used(?!) copies from $1.56. Shoulda taken a screenshot.

I just shrugged and said "Amazon being Amazon".

On the KDP sales-reporting front, saw a sale appear midday yesterday for one of my unloved Victorian novellas, which was _soooo_ close to hitting a rank of 500,000. (I never rank high enough to get excited about, so I try to be thrilled whenever I hit a nice round number...) The sales rank finally bounded upwards late this morning (to, like, ~83,000...) something like twenty hours after the sale was reported, and Amazon only knows how long after it actually took place. Nothing sells and my sales rank drops every hour, but sell a copy, and you have to wait a day for it to go up? Sigh...


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## The Fussy Librarian (May 3, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> _"For your reference, if the order is placed using a debit card it can take up to 2 to 3 days for the sales transaction to show up on the "Reports" section of your KDP dashboard."_
> 
> This is the most interesting thing so far. If someone is looking for KDP to reflect a specific sale they have verified, they have to know if it was a debit card purchase. Otherwise there will be no correlation to the time of purchase and the time of posting to KDP reports.


That is very curious. I've gifted several copies using my Amazon account (which is linked to a debit card) and they pop up almost instantly in the reports.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I'm starting to think that in-between the servers that record the sales and the servers that report the sales is a giant magic 8 ball.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

After a slow weekend, I got 3 sales today.  Two to Amazon and one to Barnes & Noble.

So have your sales picked up too?


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

I don't normally track my sales obsessively (well, I'm obsessive about totals, but not individual books). However, I did notice that two of my top sellers have moved zero copies today according to KDP, yet they have maintained their ranks and fluctuated up and down with sales movements all day. So something is still frozen.

I just happened to notice those two because they're at a very noticeable number.  I think my others moved a few copies here or there, but those two are definitely still frozen for no reason, and I know they've had sales.


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## KealanPatrick (Sep 5, 2010)

Steven Konkoly said:


> I noticed someone else had a funny price listing. The Kindle version of my book is now available at the bargain price of $5.99 according to Amazon. I checked KDP, and I'm still listed at $3.99, where I want it. Anyone else seeing random price changes? If I'm missing a thread on this topic, please slap my hand. I imagine Amazon won't compensate me for this "error." Haven't sold a book as of last checking around noon.


Yep, I noticed this today too. For a period of about an hour, every single one of my titles, from the $0.99 short stories to the $4.99 title, increased in price by two dollars. I almost had a heart attack.


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## Tammie Clarke Gibbs (Dec 30, 2010)

Only slightly off topic. Do any of you know how closely to the once an hour the rankings are updated? Thanks.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Ok, now my sales have dropped to zero.

Up until the 19th, I was selling at a very steady rate - 13 a day in the US and 3 a day in the UK. Since the 19th, which is when I uploaded an update to the book that is responsible for virtually all of those sales, sales in the US halved - 6 a day.

Now they have dropped to zero - nothing sold in the US for over 24 hours. I accept it could just be a blip. I also accept that people could have just stopped buying my books. But it does seem strange that this complete collapse coincides with uploading a new version.

If some kind volunteer wants a copy of any of my books, I'll gift one as a test.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

I've had some sales David, but nothing compared to what they should be. Today I've taken the drastic step of deleting Amazon links on my tweets and replacing them with B&N or Smashwords.

It seems the harder I write and market my sales are getting worse than disastrous.


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## julie sellers (May 6, 2011)

dgaughran said:


> Ok, now my sales have dropped to zero.
> 
> Up until the 19th, I was selling at a very steady rate - 13 a day in the US and 3 a day in the UK. Since the 19th, which is when I uploaded an update to the book that is responsible for virtually all of those sales, sales in the US halved - 6 a day.
> 
> ...


I have had severe drops in sales like this each time I've updated my books. I know they have still been for sale, but whatever Amazon does to help sell them doesn't work during that time. Each time my ranks have dropped by 10's of thousands and sales have been next to nothing.

I haven't made an changes now, but in the last day I've gone from selling 10+ per day and a rank of 8K to selling 2 yesterday and only 1 today...

Come on fall!

Julie


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

Sometime around the 20th of this month my sales dropped off too. 

During the past two days, my KDP reports show 75% fewer sales than normal during the daytime and early evening hours. But then, when I check again in the early mornings, quite a few sales have posted overnight. This suggests to me that the sales reports are lagging real time purchases by 12 or more hours.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Ugh. KDP replied. 

They said there currently IS a reporting issue with some accounts but mine is NOT one of those affected.

They also said that my account WAS one of those affected with the outage on August 10th/11th, but all those sales - as I suspected - have since been reported to my account.

Finally, they have forwarded my suggestion on better reporting of this outages to us, and that they will see if there is some way to highlight what sales are added at a later date (after reporting delays when they do finally catch up).


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

I think it's servers or certain books affected. I have one title that still bounces along ticking sales throughout the day, but my two best-sellers only show one copy moved between the both of them in the past 24 hours, and they normally sell about 8-10 a day apiece. But the sales ranks have not really fluctuated to anything out of the normal. If they had truly only sold 1 copy in the past 24 hours, both would be hovering somewhere in the 30-50k range, and they're not.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

I'm very confused.


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

sibelhodge said:


> I don't trust that their reporting is working properly.


Neither do I. My rankings have been frozen pretty much all day. From 11 am through 7:30 pm. Hard to believe. And this is about the 5th or 6th day that has happened.


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## _Sheila_ (Jan 4, 2011)

I don't know what is going on with mine either.

How do you zoom up or down thousands in ratings, with the sale of a few books?

I'm holding out hope that one of these days I'll wake up with a note in my email that says 'you were actually making sales, my bad -- love Amazon'  

Sheila


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

I finally got a reply from KDP customer service that they are looking into the issue of my missing book. Sales started up again for me, too.


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

_Sheila_ said:


> I don't know what is going on with mine either.
> 
> How do you zoom up or down thousands in ratings, with the sale of a few books?
> 
> ...


Sheila that's what I want to know.

I released my new book on Saturday and zoomed up the chart to 33,000 with 2 sales ONLY reported! Yeah right! Not possible, I'm afraid. ;-(


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Mel Comley said:


> Sheila that's what I want to know.
> 
> I released my new book on Saturday and zoomed up the chart to 33,000 with 2 sales ONLY reported! Yeah right! Not possible, I'm afraid. ;-(


Actually, that's just about within the realm of possibility. Coming from the 200k or 300k level, the first sale will bring the rank up to the 60-80k level; the second sale into the 30k-50k level; and the third sale into the low 20s or high teens -- depending upon the day, time of day, and time between sales.

My Novellas have sold 64 so far this month, not quite an average of 3 per day with a maximum of 6 and a minimum of 0. It's ranking has varied between 13k and 70k (the day with 0 sales).

What's bugging me right now is that I had 21 sales by 4pm today -- which for me augers a good to very good day and 2 sales between 4 and 8 which is when I get the majority of my daily sales. I no longer trust Amazon's reporting.


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## tensen (May 17, 2011)

jillmyles said:


> I think it's servers or certain books affected. I have one title that still bounces along ticking sales throughout the day, but my two best-sellers only show one copy moved between the both of them in the past 24 hours, and they normally sell about 8-10 a day apiece.


I agree with your thinking that it is certain books. I've noticed a few of our titles are at complete standstills even though the sale rank doesn't account for that, but others are reporting properly.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but I gifted a copy to two people to check if there was any issue with my book/reporting. The sales showed up right away. Then I sold four more copies over the next few hours.

It was as if there was a blockage, and the gifted copies cleared the pipes!

Or maybe my karmic balance had tilted over into negative, and it needed a couple of presents to take the needle out of the red.

Either way, I'm happy to be rolling again. Or puttering at least. Still, better than being stalled!


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Since the 10/11th black hole, my feeling is that sales aren't reported anymore in the 'real time' way (like within 10 minutes) maybe they once were.  For my sales, it's like there's a four hour delay between when the rankings improve and when the sales are posted.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

@Sarah

I've always noted a four/five hour delay between the sale appearing in KDP and the change in ranking. The sale itself usually appears within the hour in KDP.

@modwitch

A different pipe, eh? Good to know. The internet truly is a series of tubes.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

It's probably a mistake to consider Amazon's KDP reporting to be realtime. I don't think they make that claim anywhere, and one Amazon email someone here received  said debit card purchases could be delayed up to three days in KDP reporting. There are zillions of debit cards in play. So buying a book, and then expecting immediate reporting is just not realistic. It doesn't indicate a problem. Hence, the fact that something which is not realtime does not operate in realtime is not surprising.

We also see different experience here with the timing of sales and ranking. My ranking always leads my sales. All I have to do is glance at the rank and I will know a few sales will appear in one or two hours. Others have the opposite experience.

We are all spread over multiple servers. Sales are made on multiple servers. Customer records are on multiple servers. The accounting files are on multiple servers. Each server is limited in what it can do at any one time, so they keep work in queues until they can get to it. If the wait is too long, they send the work over to another server that isn't doing much. Add to that the idea that there is probably nothing in the whole Amazon system that has lower priority than KDP reporting for authors, and we are seeing normal operations.

I grant there was a screw up last week. Those are normal, too. They happen all the time, however we usually don't see them so we don't get concerned. Maybe we would be in general panic if we did?


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Good points Terrence. Interesting that you see ranking changes first. I've never experienced that - except for periods where there is a widespread reporting delay like last week.


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## D/W (Dec 29, 2010)

dgaughran said:


> I've always noted a four/five hour delay between the sale appearing in KDP and the change in ranking. The sale itself usually appears within the hour in KDP.


This is how sales reporting and subsequent rank change work for me too.


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

I'm selling a quarter of what I normally would over the past three days. My ranks have jounced (I totally just made up that word!) around a little, but nothing that would alarm me, so I have to conclude that:

1) Stuff is still borked in Amazonland
2) No one is buying this week due to back to school and summer
3) All of the above

I am trying not to think about it too much.


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## MartinLake (May 9, 2011)

All this suggests that I should do what more experienced writers tell us to do but which I can never quite bring myself to do 

Don't look at my sales too often.  

I'm trying to look once a week only.  

At the moment I'm managing once every 5 or 6 hours so a way to go yet!


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## Remi Michaud (Apr 24, 2011)

I'm trying to maintain perspective here, like many of you. But...

Before the big meltdown, I was averaging 30 sales a day. I knew it wouldn't last; it's August, after all. But to go from 30 a day to (for the first time since May) 0 sales today, well, I can't help but wonder what's going on at the 'Zon.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

My missing book, which I uploaded during the KDP meltdown, is now finally in all three Kindle stores. Now if it turns out that there are some missing sales as well (though I did get a UK sale since the meltdown) I will be perfectly happy.


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

So usually sales ranks fluctuate every hour and some change (it moves a few minutes every month, and this month it's happening sometime in the second half of the hour). I've got a friend with a big NY release and have been watching her ranks, and while they're low, they're also frozen more often than not. It'll be stuck for 2-3 hours in a row, then fine for 2 hours, then stuck all night.  I mean, if I go to sleep and your rank is 4,935 and I wake up and your rank is 4,935...that is an INCREDIBLE coincidence, or stuff is stuck. 

Not that I watch Amazon that much, of course. Cough. It's for a friend! Promise!


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

So all the sales I was 'missing' stacked up overnight. Not in great numbers, but enough to make me think they are all there now. My daily average has re-aligned with what is normal for August. One of my books in particular had a surge of six copies in the past 6 hours and the rank has not moved to show that, so it's simply more playing catch-up by Amazon. 

Just thought I would share. Whatever is happening seems to be trickling in.

I will say that it's not just digital sales. My husband ordered some computer thingie for a home server (don't ask me what it was. it's black and has pretty blue lights on it, lol) and he wanted to return it, but when he went to pull up the order history, it's not there. So they're definitely having recordkeeping issues all around.


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## Julie Christensen (Oct 13, 2010)

My book just went free and I'm seeing the sales update every time I hit refresh on my browser.  I'm "selling" about 170 and hour right now and KDP seems to be updating in real time (every frew seconds.)


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

Maybe it's just me.  But honestly, it IS Wednesday.


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## John Hartness (Aug 3, 2009)

Everything has been really sluggish for me all day, Sarah. I've sold about half my average for this time of day.


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

John Hartness said:


> Everything has been really sluggish for me all day, Sarah. I've sold about half my average for this time of day.


Ditto. Well, less than half, now.


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## HeidiHall (Sep 5, 2010)

I'm stalled, too. Happened about 2pm PST... Dang! The start of Sept. was looking so good  . Oh well, maybe I'm just checking too often (procrastinating from finishing edits).


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Me too. I have had a couple of sales in early September and since then nothing. I don't necessarily sell every day, but several days without sales in a row is unusual. Glad it's not just me, though, since I was getting worried.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

From the beginning of September, I've had two days with half of normal sales. Yesterday was one of those days. I don't know what to think. Maybe sales are really that low. I'm hoping it's just a lag in reporting.


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

Suddenly slow for me too.  Stalled day before yesterday and has been very sluggish since.  I was hoping to sell 1 book a day of my new book (it's a much better book than the first) but even that stopped on the 5th and hasn't moved.  

I'm going to do a "Sales Dance" in front of my computer. . .maybe that will help.


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## Sally C (Mar 31, 2011)

Mine were going okay up until end August, but have really tanked now... hope its just a lag, am beginning to panic a bit!


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## Sally C (Mar 31, 2011)

I'll join you in that sales dance, Judi!


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## Nadine (Jul 10, 2011)

I just did a sales dance as well.  Sadly, I dance like Elaine in Seinfeld.


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

Meeee toooo!


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

Nadine said:


> I just did a sales dance as well. Sadly, I dance like Elaine in Seinfeld.


Funny!


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

If my sales dance is as effective as my rain dance, we're in trouble. (I live in Texas.)


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

destill said:


> If my sales dance is as effective as my rain dance, we're in trouble. (I live in Texas.)


Ummmm. . .how about we put you in charge of the music instead. : )


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## John Hartness (Aug 3, 2009)

Vanished. Kaput. Even on Author Central it says "this book is no longer ranked." I checked around, and it's not some huge anti-indie conspiracy, because I found Big 6 and small press books that are unranked suddenly, and I found indie books that still have their rankings. Dunno what's up, and don't care as long as it's fixed by the time they pay me. 

I'm such a liar, it's totally freaking me out.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

I had a book go "live" yesterday. Sold one copy, according to KDP--and that was to ME! Maybe that's okay because I found format issues. For some odd reason, in about five places, the first line indent just keeps indenting for several additional lines. I've done everything I can to fix it. It looks fine on the Word file. But when the file uploads to Kindle, something goes wonky. This is driving me so insane that I'm starting to look like the lady on the book's cover (You Can't Change Crazy).


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## KatieKlein (Dec 19, 2010)

Something _must_ be going on. My ranking is the same from last night, and I'm only at eight sold so far today. By this time I generally have 20-30.


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

destill said:


> I had a book go "live" yesterday. Sold one copy, according to KDP--and that was to ME! Maybe that's okay because I found format issues. For some odd reason, in about five places, the first line indent just keeps indenting for several additional lines. I've done everything I can to fix it. It looks fine on the Word file. But when the file uploads to Kindle, something goes wonky. This is driving me so insane that I'm starting to look like the lady on the book's cover (You Can't Change Crazy).


Rest Assured it is intended to make you feel nutso. I had fix one of my books several times because apostrophes came out as question marks. Take a break so you can regain your sight before you become text blind.


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## Glen Krisch (Dec 21, 2010)

I know that I have a U.K. sale that hasn't shown up yet at KDP.


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

Well, I had flurry of sales the first three days of the month, and then nothing.

"Flurry" being a relative term, mind you.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

ToniD said:


> Well, I had flurry of sales the first three days of the month, and then nothing.
> 
> "Flurry" being a relative term, mind you.


Likewise... on both parts, sadly.


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

destill said:


> I had a book go "live" yesterday. Sold one copy, according to KDP--and that was to ME! Maybe that's okay because I found format issues. For some odd reason, in about five places, the first line indent just keeps indenting for several additional lines. I've done everything I can to fix it. It looks fine on the Word file. But when the file uploads to Kindle, something goes wonky. This is driving me so insane that I'm starting to look like the lady on the book's cover (You Can't Change Crazy).


Do you have your paragraphs set up as a style, where the indents are specified in the style sheet. If not, you should do that. Manual indentation and tabs re formatting nasties. Kindle .prw's like word styles and stylesheets.

Edward C. Patterson


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## Harmonious (Mar 4, 2011)

Aah, thanks for this thread, that explains why I've had the exact same ranking for about 5 or 6 days. I've republished but still nothing has shifted, guessed it might be an internal thing...


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## JRainey (Feb 1, 2011)

So, things are very slow for me, too. Slower than normal, even. Whatever the reason, at least I'm not alone!


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Diana,

What Ed said. Plus: Check the format of whatever comes before the problem area. There is a style option where one style can carry over to the next.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

I've removed all tabs, and that didn't work. Pleading ignorance about "style options." Will have to go research that. Thank you for the advice. 

I've moved that file back and forth between Word 2010 and Word 2007, so maybe something went wrong during the moves. I couldn't get the cover image to appear when I uploaded the Word 2010 version. When I saved the file as a Word 2007 doc, the image appeared. It's always something...


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

destill said:


> I've removed all tabs, and that didn't work. Pleading ignorance about "style options." Will have to go research that. Thank you for the advice.
> 
> I've moved that file back and forth between Word 2010 and Word 2007, so maybe something went wrong during the moves. I couldn't get the cover image to appear when I uploaded the Word 2010 version. When I saved the file as a Word 2007 doc, the image appeared. It's always something...


Actually, I feel better that am not the only one who suffers these problems! Also, I'm still frozen at KDP. I need a new dance.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

Judi Coltman said:


> Actually, I feel better that am not the only one who suffers these problems! Also, I'm still frozen at KDP. I need a new dance.


Okay. I'll change the music. No more violins! It's time to shake a tailfeather!


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## Theresa M Moore (Nov 19, 2010)

John Hartness said:


> Vanished. Kaput. Even on Author Central it says "this book is no longer ranked." I checked around, and it's not some huge anti-indie conspiracy, because I found Big 6 and small press books that are unranked suddenly, and I found indie books that still have their rankings. Dunno what's up, and don't care as long as it's fixed by the time they pay me.
> 
> I'm such a liar, it's totally freaking me out.


I haven't had any normal sales since the August glitch, and some of my sales rankings have dropped to "unknown". Two of my books' rankings have dropped to the 4millions or so, from a ranking of the mid 50,000s. No sales at all since Monday. 2 since the beginning of the month. The whole look of the thing is freakishly skewed toward the devices and the books are parked toward the bottom. The only way I can find my books is if I check by title. Nothing is the same anymore. They owe me money but I'll have to wait to the Sept. 15 report to see how it all shook out in the end. September may be worse than August. Just have to wait.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

Good. I started to panic.


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## Paul Clayton (Sep 12, 2009)

I've noticed a strange thing in my rankings of late...  The first book in my series sells fewer than the second, and the third leads in sales.  It's the reverse of what it's been since I uploaded them for sale.  Don't know what's going on or how to account for that.  Strange.  And did you see those lights in the sky last night...


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

No, but I had a strange dream that I was driving down a desert road and then next thing I know, I'm lying on a table with these strange creatures surrounding me and. . .


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

Did anyone see a bump in sales between yesterday and this morning? I sure didn't.


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## 48209 (Jul 4, 2011)

So, after my rankings showing I should have been having sales that never showed up and I said -I' not looking again in august, I finally just started looking again.

The goodnews, ranking moves and sales are more match-matchy... the bad news, I'm averaging just slightly over 1 sale a day now


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## ndrake (Apr 20, 2011)

Suddenly no Amazon sales for Sept here.  Sales on Smashwords venues are doing well.  Aug sales for Amazon were some of the best.  Very odd.


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## Doctor Barbara (Aug 17, 2010)

It is strange....you just can't figure it.  Amazon sales started good in September yet came to a screeching halt about two days ago - yet my website had even more traffic the last two days.

Yes, I saw those lights in the sky!


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## ndrake (Apr 20, 2011)

LOL!


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

My top selling book has taken a nosedive in sales over the past two or three days. So I just did a Google search for the title name. The Amazon links to this book used to come up at the top of the search page. Now they are WAY back on page five. And many of the search listings for this book are missing. What's going on? Maybe this explains the sales decline.


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2011)

Posting every little bounce or flounce of one's book sales strikes me as somewhat unseemly, not to say narcissistic. Why not hourly reports? As if WHO cares? Oh, by all means post success and even an occasional moaning for low sales over a long period, but this stuff? Hogwash.

Yeah, I know. I'm hardboiled.


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## _Sheila_ (Jan 4, 2011)

I just looked at Author Central.

'No sales info' is available for any of my books.  

That can't be good.  

Sheila


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## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

I was about to start a thread asking if anyone has noticed in the last few days the ranks disappearing and reappearing. Mine were gone for a bit there again a few minutes ago. Now two are back but one is still gone. Wonder what Amazon is up to.


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## Erica Sloane (May 11, 2011)

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but could it have to do with the redesign of their website?

I've noticed really slow sales the last couple of days on _some_ of my titles. The fact that it's happening only one some of them is what worries me.


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> I was about to start a thread asking if anyone has noticed in the last few days the ranks disappearing and reappearing. Mine were gone for a bit there again a few minutes ago. Now two are back but one is still gone. Wonder what Amazon is up to.


This is making me nuts, because I have one book that had a little sales surge today. And which is the ONE book of mine missing its ranking? Yep, that one! All the others are there in their lousy ratings glory, but the one that's actually probably moving up a bit has no rank. Sigh...


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

I'm not actually frozen out, but for the past two days, just a tiny trickle compared to my usual sales numbers for all books.


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

I know this is an old thread but. . .

I have seen exactly 0 sales in the last 20 hours and am HOPING that something is wonky because of the whole Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire flooding of the market.  Of course, it could also mean I've hit an arid patch.


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## Peter Salisbury (Mar 3, 2010)

I'm interested to see this thread active again because I've been meaning to mention something for a couple of weeks now. Over that time, the server which 'serves' the SE of England has given peculiar UK Reports. Whereas sales used to come with some sort of relevance to real time, there has been a considerable amount of 'clumping'.

In other words, you get no sales all day and half the evening, then suddenly a bunch show up across several books all at once, then no more for hours. I don't believe it's representative of what customers are actually doing because if it is, they'd have to be on the phone to each other, saying "So we all click on 3, OK? 1... 2..."

Also, nearly every day now several sales show up between nine and ten in the morning, at a time when no customers have ever bought my SF novels in the last 2 years. Has anyone else noticed 'clumping' or is it just me?


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## Ashley Lynn Willis (Jan 27, 2011)

I think it's gone wonky. For the past five days I've woken up to a rash of sales and then nothing, not one sale until evening when all the sudden I get another rash of sales. Usually, I get a trickle all day long. I thought it was just a strange week for buying books because my rank would fall so I figured someone was selling book, just not me, but now I think it's the reporting. I hope they get it fixed by Monday because I've got a Pixel of Inc. sponsorship going live that day.


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## CosmicHerb (Sep 29, 2011)

Peter Salisbury said:


> I'm interested to see this thread active again because I've been meaning to mention something for a couple of weeks now. Over that time, the server which 'serves' the SE of England has given peculiar UK Reports. Whereas sales used to come with some sort of relevance to real time, there has been a considerable amount of 'clumping'.
> 
> In other words, you get no sales all day and half the evening, then suddenly a bunch show up across several books all at once, then no more for hours. I don't believe it's representative of what customers are actually doing because if it is, they'd have to be on the phone to each other, saying "So we all click on 3, OK? 1... 2..."
> 
> Also, nearly every day now several sales show up between nine and ten in the morning, at a time when no customers have ever bought my SF novels in the last 2 years. Has anyone else noticed 'clumping' or is it just me?


Nope, not just you. I get serious clumping issues as well, and it drives me scatty, especially when I seem to be flying up the ranks just to fall back. The clumps happen early monring and later evening for me.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Whereas sales used to come with some sort of relevance to real time, there has been a considerable amount of 'clumping'."_

Sure. It happens all the time and is normal for systems like this. Amazon has never said KDP will maintain realtime reporting. that's a myth. KDP reporting is a very low priority in their network because there is no downstream process that depends on KDP reporting. So it gets resources when no other system needs them.

Sometimes this kind of system will change for a user. Let's say a firm buys 100 new servers and installs them. If you are on one of them, it might have excess capacity. So maybe you see your reports in realtime. Then as more resources are needed, those new servers are assigned more and more work. That means your reporting gets a lower and lower priority.

I have always seen my rankings move up hours before the sales were reported in KDP. I also get big clumps just after midnight. Other people see the exact opposite. Welcome to the computer hive.


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## Millard (Jun 13, 2011)

Whenever this thread gets bumped, it makes me yearn for the kind of sales where I could actively tell if KDP was just being slow.


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## Peter Salisbury (Mar 3, 2010)

Ah-Ha! I thought this might just be a UK thing but it looks like it's more wide-spread.

Occasionally I get a day of trickling sales but mostly they've been 'all clumped-up' for at least a couple of weeks now. I even started to wonder if it was KDP trying to wean me off checking sales or something.

A very interesting explanation, Terrence, thank you. Some of us must just have been lucky with our servers for the last 2 years because it's only recently that I've come across this effect.


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## Sarah Woodbury (Jan 30, 2011)

This thread was one of those things that pushed me to only check sales once a day.  I've managed to do that for the last two months--just once a day, in the morning.  I can't tell you how much better it has been for my peace of mind  ...


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## jonathanmoeller (Apr 19, 2011)

> This thread was one of those things that pushed me to only check sales once a day.


Yup. I've been sticking to twice daily for the last few months, and I'm going to switch to once soon.

It helps when you have enough ebooks that you can't _remember _what the sales numbers were yesterday...


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

I sure hope it's wonky. Yesterday, KDP reported 5 sales for me for the entire day. It's been a year or more since I've seen a day like that.


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## Lilah (Nov 15, 2011)

I think I'm going to have to stop checking so often too. It's driving me insane and I can waste ridiculous amounts of time at it.

On the other hand, there's always the chance that there'll have been one... more... sale!


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## Lilah (Nov 15, 2011)

I also hope that the sales are wonky, since I've sold an all time record of 3 copies through amazon today. I'm not exactly a bestseller, but I've come to expect a little more than that.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Yeah, I try to only check on Saturday night at around midnight (when the 6-week monies updates).  Saner that way.  Hard to resist checking during the week though. Sigh.


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## Artemis Hunt (Aug 23, 2011)

And here I was thinking clumping is more a sales pattern with Americans  I live on the other side of the world, and tend to notice a steady trickle of sales throughout the day and night (US time), with the exception of the hours of 0630 - 0830 and 1900 - 2000. I always attributed to that being waking time and dinner time, where no one has time to buy books!

Now I'm thinking maybe it's waking and dinner time for Amazon, hee hee.


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