Authors: Have all Your Stats in DTP Disappeaed?

[Dave Dykema]

I have stats, but no sales. Ordinarily that wouldn't surprise me  except that for the last few days I've been selling several copies. So I think it's not reporting properly (at least I hope so). Now someone will come on and tell me they've sold 46 copies of their book! (Yea for them!...boo for me...  )

[Karen_McQ]

Dave, same here--stats but no sales. I hope you're right and it's just not reporting properly....

[Edward C. Patterson]

Gone again. Nothing. In fact it was there a few minutes ago, but no new sales reported today and I'm my book do better in nkings, which means sales. I wish they'dget their act together.

Ed Patterson

[Eric C]

FYI, I have no access now, but earlier had stats but no sales (hasn't happened in three months previous to today) and my first refund ever.

[Ricky Sides]

Yes it's like they aren't adding sales. My rankings improved. One customer reported buying a whole set of my series but the numbers, when they were up, were the same as this morning.

Hopefully it's just a glitch that will be squared away soon.

[JimC1946]

My October sales dropped like a rock early Sunday evening, but as I kept looking, the sales were gradually increasing, and this morning, everything looked okay.

Seeing the sales gradually increase last night made me think they were rebuilding or restoring a database or something like that.

[Edward C. Patterson]

Yes, but the report is BLANK again.

Ed Patterson

[JimC1946]

Ed, all of my reports are now up-to-date. I still think maybe they're restoring a database, and it will take time to get everyone's reports up to date. Don't panic yet! 

[AnnaM]

I had the same problem today -- monthly report was inaccessible or showed static numbers (sales not being incremented). Meanwhile the rankings improved on both books (so I knew sales were being executed).

I just checked a minute ago, and it appears they have applied the updates to the database record (sales suddenly jumped up).  I think their database crashes occasionally, and when they bring it back up they have to apply (run a restore process) the updates (sales made during the database downtime).  The good news is they appear to have a good process for restoration . . . it's just annoying to see rank jumping around while the sales report isn't showing sales.

I'm wondering if the database hits space limits . . . Kindle is a rapidly growing business, and these glitches are typical "growing pains".  Overall, it's a good kind of problem to have (rapid growth), and nothing to worry about . . . they have backups and transaction logs . . . redundancy is built into the system, so that these sales transactions are captured and saved, even when the database goes down.  In a former life I was a database analyst, and we had the same kinds of problems (rapid growth in our industry, ergo millions of online transactions).  The system at Amazon is huge and complex . . . millions of records . . . as the largest online retailer they are on the "bleeding edge" of electronic retailing . . . going where no retail merchant system has gone before . . . there will be a few glitches.