A Round-Up of Amazon Plug-Ins for Authors

Whilst digging around on the Author Central pages on Amazon (I think), I stumbled onto a page of Chrome (and sometimes Firefox) plug-ins that, in some cases, are beneficial to authors. Here's what I've found. 

Obsessing over stats is a terrible distraction from writing, of course, but it does help to pay a wee bit of attention to things when you're running a promo. I guess it's also useful if you actually sell books, but I don't know what that's like.

KDP Champ - This looks valuable and interesting. An app/web page and plug-in combo, KDP Champ will notify you of any changes in sales, reviews, rankings and more, at the frequency you desire. Get a daily report, and never have to worry again. It's kind of nice having all your stats in a separate phone app, if nothing else, and it's quite rich in features.

It takes a bit more in terms of set-up, because it uses your cookies, not your log-in. But that's nice from a security standpoint. Plus it walks you through the process, which is easy and doesn't take long to do.

After some syncing, you're set. One really nice feature here is that it will break down what countries are downloading your free books. I have to say, it's extremely convenient having all these stats available on a phone app. It's a pity that the historical data doesn't seem to be accurate, but that's somewhat understandable. Mine goes back to November 2011. I wish this was working, regardless.

I daresay if you only use one tool, this will be the one. Especially because it also seems to make a cash register sound. It's feature complete.

Score: A+.

UPDATE: The extremely agile and nimble developer has already contacted me about a fix to the historical issue. Amazon apparently changed the format many years ago, leading to this problem. It will be resolved soon. Impressive work, and more evidence that this is a must-have tool for Amazon authors.

Datasprout - This scrapes sales data and gives you a single page dashboard for sales. It's pretty good at it. Nothing that isn't available on your Reports pages, but it tightens the delivery and gives you everything at a glance. An admirable endeavor. It's actually a bit better than the Reports Beta Amazon is rolling out. One caveat, Garbage In, Garbage out. Since it does use Amazon data, it makes the same mistake Reports Beta does. Namely, it doesn't quite know how to handle returned books. Reports Beta is treating them as sales, and so does Datasprout.

It generates a chart showing a comparison against the previous month, and generates a table with all book sales in all formats. Other than the silly, fixable return problem, this is a good one. Maybe I should send them an email to try and get that fixed. It also places itself as a link on your Reports page, which is nice.

Rating: B+.

BookReport - Another dashboard. You can launch the plug-in, or bookmark the webpage. It's not as compact as Datasprout, and I have to ding it for that. There are a lot of customization options in the display table, though, and that might appeal to you. Plus it makes a 'ching!' sound when you have sales. So it's got that going for it.

It does handle returns correctly on the chart, so that's something. It's something that hurts, but it helps. (I just had what I think are my first returns, hence my continual freaking out over it. It was probably my mom.)

While I prefer Datasprout, the fact that it is charting the returns correctly (even though the totals are wrong), it evens out. 

Rating: B+

Bookching - Okay, I can't really use this. Your mileage may vary. It's largely a bulk-uploader for Amazon paperbacks? I can't imagine what sort of publishing mill you're running if you need this, but I don't like the implications. It also seems to be subscription based, but it installed for free and does a tiny bit anyway. I'm not going to look into this further.

One interesting aspect is that it will let you play with publishing options as far as the printing cost of your book, which is vaguely useful if you're into that sort of stuff. To let you maximize profits, as it were. Ick.

The sales goals are interesting, akin to what Google Analytics does for webpage impressions. Also, it did show me that I've published under three different names, like an idiot. Thank you, Bookching. For that, I won't give you a C+. Worth investigating if it fits your specific situation. 

Rating: B.

KDP/Amazon BSR Data - I don't even know what exactly to call this, but that's close enough. Moderately useful, it collects some of the book data from your book page, and inserts it near the top of the page. That's how I use it, anyway. 

It saves me a bit of scrolling, so that's nice. Be warned, it can ugly up a page quick if you're looking at your entire list of published titles. There seems to be a wealth of Search Engine Optimization tools relating to keywords that I have yet to explore. There's a lot going on under the surface here, and I will probably look into it further.

In the meantime, visit their page, as there are a ton of links in many categories that can't help but to have some value in there somewhere.

Rank: B.

Merch by Amazon - Okay, while this isn't directly author related, it is interesting and possibly worthwhile. Amazon is going head-to-head with Spreadsheet, Cafe Press, and the like, offering to print your designs on shirts and things, and sell them for you. It could be very lucrative for authors with a big following, or great cover designs. Plus each shirt becomes a walking billboard. John Carmack, creator of the video game Doom used to wear a Doom shirt to conventions that said "Wrote it" on the back. I like that. 

Rank: A, without even checking into it further.

BookBeam - While this looks quite useful, I am not convinced of the $12 a month subscription price. Category finder, keyword generator, niche finder, spy on your competition. This is worth looking into if your sales aren't less than the monthly subscription rate. Or even if they are. A wealth of tools at your fingertips, if you're serious. Apparently I am not. I'm tempted to give it a month's test run anyway. 

Tempting. If I give it a test drive, it will probably deserve its own in-depth write up. The $12 price is for a yearly subscription, and I definitely don't need that. A month is $17.

Rank: A+. It looks that useful.

Seller App - A quick and dirty keyword ranking tool. Free, no login. Useful. It generates lists of the top-ranked keywords based on your input. This is super for improving your visibility. 

Rank: A+.

KDP Miner - This is another tool to search for useful keywords to apply to your titles by providing the most profitable and popular ones. Unfortunately, it says Time Travel is not profitable. Sorry. Could use some improvement. 

It did pull up the top sixteen time travel related keywords, and it also works with Audible. You might find some value here. It's mostly to spy on successful titles, including letting you check out the most popular covers on Amazon. Honestly, I didn't spend a lot of time with this one, because it doesn't interest me all that much. I'll probably check it out in depth later. I'm getting sick of looking at plugins. 

Rating: B.

BSR Master - This is another best seller ranking app. I think. I can't remember what BSR means anymore. I'm pretty sure that's it. Unfortunately, it's very spartan, has no real documentation, and doesn't seem to do anything. It probably stole my bank account information or something.

It just says 'loading data' (what data?), and never seems to do anything. This will get uninstalled first. Sorry, Andrea Biancolli. It's not even going to get a picture. I am that underwhelmed.

Rating: F++.

There you have it. You might get some use out of at least one of these. I've mostly settled on KDP Champ, myself, because of the app feature. If you're a really high-powered author, you might check into something like Helium, which probably does everything all of these tools do and a lot more. It also costs $39 a month to subscribe. For most of us, that's money better spent on promotions. Or pizza.

I hope that helps.

Book Blogger Plug-In - A late addition to the review, but a useful one. This isn't a browser plug-in, but one for your blog. Painlessly add a free Kindle eBook panel to your Wordpress or Blogspot author page. Great sticky content, and you're supporting other indie authors at the same time. Brilliant. It also allows you to insert your own Clickbank affiliate link, so it's a potential passive income source. I expect this would do rather well on a high-traffic blog in particular. 

Be warned, it's whacking big, so add it to the bottom of your sidebar, or it will dominate your page. Still, it's a nice feature to have, and you can even customize the feed to a particular genre. Installation was easy, and you can see it to the left of this column now. You can also submit your own free eBook for inclusion for an extra bit of synergy.

Rating: A.

If you're really into the free tools thing, here is an outstanding curated resource for finding more: https://medium.com/swlh/300-awesome-free-things-e07b3cd5fd5b