Built a free Kindle deal tracker with full price history and predictions

[PJBoyle]

Yo!

Wanted to ask for some feedback from everyone here on something I’ve been building.

Had a lot of frustrations recently with book deal sites.

I know, economically speaking, times are tough. But it feels like some of the big boys out there are becoming a little too focused on the author monetisation at the cost of the service to the reader.

Talking things like too many sponsored recommendations of books that no one has heard of or are newly published.

I end up scrolling through a lot of low quality stuff because they’ve paid for a promo, making it hard to find something that’s worth reading.

I know they’ve gotta keep the lights on, but there’s a balance to be struck, and I think they’ve lost it.

So I decided to build my own version at vagrantpress.com (I like to travel and read).

You can just browse the site, or you can sign up for an account to get the historical information for any book, and be able to track certain books for price changes.

With an account, you can pick genres too. At most, you’ll get 2 emails from us per day.

1. The books on offer in your preferred genres (all in one email so you don’t get spammed)
2. A notification of a watched book going on sale

We can do all of this because there’s a few things I’m trying to do differentlly…

- Live prices, not stale ones: Honestly this is hard as Amazon can change prices on a dime. I built my system to look multiple times per day for updates so they’re as up to date as they can be.
- Full price history on every book we add: This is, IMO, the best bit. A lot of sites have no real transparency into the deal and whether or not it’s actually a deal. Hell, Amazon often bumps prices before Black Friday then discounts it as a deal back to the original price. Because I’m pulling historical pricing, I’ve done it in a way where we compare today’s price against the changes over the last 90 days to see if it really is a deal.
- Other signals we pull: I’m also pulling sales rank, ratings and reviews, and running price prediction based on the historical changes. All to try and surface things like hidden gems that are growing in sales, great reviews, but still reasonably unknown. A better method IMO than just saying “this one’s cheap”.

Honest caveats with this.

Right now, it’s US focused only.

As this is a new thing, I can only really focus on one Geography right now while I fix all the issues this system keeps throwing my way.

In time, I will build it out to focus on other geos as well.

It is also affiliate link supported. Any link through to Amazon gives me a 4% commission on every book you buy - which will be very little as these are all discount/free books, lol. But transparency is important to me.

If I can drive enough affiliate sales, I’ll get access to more info from Amazon and so can then start building this out to incorporate other geographic and regions.

In time, there will likely be avenues for some authors to buy advertising on the site as well. But, because I can build this super lean, the main focus is always going to be on surfacing the best deals.

It’s still super early days, and I keep finding little bugs.

But I’m a little worried I’m too close and can’t see the forest for the trees. Was hoping you’d be able to check it out and give me some feedback on what you like/dislike, want/need, or general feedback as well.

Oh, and in time I’ll likely build this out to include other platforms too. But, baby steps.

Cheers!

[pdurrant]

Good luck. I’m not sure that Amazon offer any affiliate payment for ebook links now. Are you aware of ereaderiq.com?

[JSWolf]

And are you aware that many people here are going to be stopping eBook purchases from Amazon.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And are you aware that many people here are going to be stopping eBook purchases from Amazon.

At least some anyway!
Other ebook sellers:
Smashwords Store, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play Store, Vivlio, Gardners, Bookshop.org, Tolino & Fable.

Amazon exclusives should be illegal.
A creative work can have an exclusive distributor (but not at expense of carving up "territories"), but exclusive titles isn't like only one supermarket selling Heinz, but like one chain being the only one that has any kind of egg. The KU system also cheats authors compared to UK or Irish Libraries and invades your privacy.

Monopolies are malicious and Amazon has over 90% of English language ebooks in the World and over 80% of USA online paperback sales.

The regulator and tax situations are broken. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ions_by_Amazon
They own Goodreads, Audible and IMDB.
The USA now practically charges them less tax than the CEOs earn and a tiny percentage compared to average workers. The USA now only regulates to the advantage of those in the Administration, not consumers.