Tracking Kindle book prices - automatic alerts and price drop info

[JenRBG]

Cool - thanks!

[zooLert]

Originally Posted by JenRBG

Cool - thanks!

Sure thing!

We are looking into the whole kindilitized book jazz.. It will take some time but we have some ideas for implementation.

Then, its just a matter of "doing"!

Thanks to everyone that has written and given us support and bug reports so far! It's greatly appreciated.

[Nickfdr]

what an innovative thread

[zooLert]

Originally Posted by Nickfdr

what an innovative thread

::

We picked up a few other ideas from other threads too...

In the upcoming days, we'll have some more feature set.

The only thing we ask in return is to help spread the good word so that we can get some more testers.. The more testers and ideas, the better it will be!

Thanks everyone.

[zooLert]

Originally Posted by zooLert

We picked up a few other ideas from other threads too...

And to announce quickly one of those ideas from other threads....

Every few hours or so, we tally up the amount of total Kindle books that we see available.

You'll find that number on the first page of the KindleMart here at :

zooLert KindleMart

Keep the ideas coming!

[SpiderMatt]

I like the idea of being able to look up books by percentage of discount but it's not always the best tool. A lot of Kindle books show up as a high discount even though they're normal price because of the difference between the e-book price and the print list price. For instance, many $9.99 books will show up as something like 70% off or more because that's the amount of difference between the list price of the printed book even though $9.99 is the normal selling price at the Kindle store. What would really be helpful in this situation is to be able to look up books within a certain price range. Then it would be easy find books you're interested in within a certain budget.

[zooLert]

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

I like the idea of being able to look up books by percentage of discount but it's not always the best tool. A lot of Kindle books show up as a high discount even though they're normal price because of the difference between the e-book price and the print list price. For instance, many $9.99 books will show up as something like 70% off or more because that's the amount of difference between the list price of the printed book even though $9.99 is the normal selling price at the Kindle store. What would really be helpful in this situation is to be able to look up books within a certain price range. Then it would be easy find books you're interested in within a certain budget.

Hi SM.

This is the kind of stuff we need to hear! Love getting feedback.

So... If I'm hearing you right, in addition to the section that we have below with all of the discount stuff, it would be nice to go and say "Price-Range" of 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, etc? How far up in etc do you go? I guess for Kindle books, not much more than ... 100?

Would that be useful to have that additional quick link on the page?

[zooLert]

Ask.. and you shall receive!

(and thanks for the suggestion too!)

Have a look at the revamped KindleMart.

On the right side, you'll see something called :

Kindle Books Price List

I think it does everything you want... and some more!

Let me know what you think.

[SpiderMatt]

Originally Posted by zooLert

Ask.. and you shall receive!

(and thanks for the suggestion too!)

Have a look at the revamped KindleMart.

On the right side, you'll see something called :

Kindle Books Price List

I think it does everything you want... and some more!

Let me know what you think.

Damn, that was some fast work. It looks great and has more options than I expected. Love it! Thanks. Might want to put a reminder for people to put in decimal points, though. I put "from 0 to 9" first and got books that were higher in price. I fixed it with "from 0.00 to 9.00" and it worked like a charm. Again, thanks. Very useful tool. Love what you're doing with the site.

[zooLert]

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

Damn, that was some fast work. It looks great and has more options than I expected. Love it! Thanks. Might want to put a reminder for people to put in decimal points, though. I put "from 0 to 9" first and got books that were higher in price. I fixed it with "from 0.00 to 9.00" and it worked like a charm. Again, thanks. Very useful tool. Love what you're doing with the site.

Thanks!!!

Its "real" user stuff that helps us figure out how to make it work right...

Maybe if we change the free form field price range to drop downs... That should help prevent free form issues like you encountered.. Or, we could just go through it before posting... Either way.

Awesome!

Glad you like it.

Please guys, keep the suggestions coming!

(and that kindilitizied-book finder-outter is still out there but its going to take a little bit of time.)

[zooLert]

It should be fixed now. We left it free form. There was a piece of code sleeping on the job before!

You should now be able to do the 3.00 as well as 3 now. Let us know!

(Thanks again for the bug report!)

[zooLert]

We added a few quick (but helpful) additions to the search.

You can now search by Author and Language.

We're getting lots of great tips and we're working on knocking as many off as possible as quickly as we can!

Please, keep it coming!

Hope everyone is enjoying the K2!

[Starhawk]

Here's a bug report...There's a book available on Amazon both as a Kindle book and hardcover titled "Dragonheart: Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern".
The Kindlemart search didn't find it...neither did it find it when I searched for "Dragonheart" or "dragonriders".

I also searched using the ISBN number from the hardcover, both the ISBN-10 and the ISBN-13 numbers. No results. BTW, which does the Kindlemart search use both the 10 and 13 digit versions?

That's mostly bug #1.

Bug #2
On searching for "dragonriders", it found the book titled "Dragonriders of Pern", and listed it as being out of stock, which didn't make sense to me. When I went to Amazon to find it via the link provided in the Kindlemart search results, the page said that it was "Not yet available", which is rather different from being out of stock.

So....maybe the search results could reflect that status more accurately?

Thanks for this! I haven't used it successfully to find anything yet, but it sounds like it should be awesome!

[zooLert]

Hey Starhawk...

Yea. .... You're finding something that isn't 100% a bug, but more of a availability issue.

For the tracker component, we rely on what is available to us via the Amazon API. Annnnnnnnnnnnnd.... we're finding, as our users are, that Amazon hasn't quite updated that Amazon API database with all the Kindle books (we hope thats just "yet").

So, its not quite a bug, but more of an annoyance.

What you will find however, is on the price search on the right side, it DOES work... Why you might ask. Well, for that, we don't use the API because we don't need to do all the fancy stuff with it that the tracker does. Bummer, I know!

So, hopefully that makes sense? If not, please let me know!

As for bug #2...

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Very nice!

I think you just gave us a hint on how to handle the is-it-kindleitizied!!!

We are primarily using the code from our existing site-wide search of amazon.com and tracking capabilities found over at the "habitat" (http://www.zoolert.com/habitat) .... We handle the out-of-stock the way we do because we weren't taking into account the way the kindle books are listed......

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The wheels are spinning.

You sir may have helped us get closer to providing our #1 wish with you bug

THANK YOU!

(And please, everyone, feel free to keep the comments coming,.. This is how we are able to keep making things better!)

Oh yea - ISBN... Should work good... Just drop the "-" for the time being. Let me know if you are finding different.

Originally Posted by Starhawk

Here's a bug report...There's a book available on Amazon both as a Kindle book and hardcover titled "Dragonheart: Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern".
The Kindlemart search didn't find it...neither did it find it when I searched for "Dragonheart" or "dragonriders".

I also searched using the ISBN number from the hardcover, both the ISBN-10 and the ISBN-13 numbers. No results. BTW, which does the Kindlemart search use both the 10 and 13 digit versions?

That's mostly bug #1.

Bug #2
On searching for "dragonriders", it found the book titled "Dragonriders of Pern", and listed it as being out of stock, which didn't make sense to me. When I went to Amazon to find it via the link provided in the Kindlemart search results, the page said that it was "Not yet available", which is rather different from being out of stock.

So....maybe the search results could reflect that status more accurately?

Thanks for this! I haven't used it successfully to find anything yet, but it sounds like it should be awesome!

[zooLert]

Quick note - we addressed the out of stock and made it properly display Not yet available in the KindleMart.

Thanks!