Hello ScribeCount users! ScribeCounters? SC Mafia? ScribeCounterati?

First: Randall, Suresh, and I want to thank you all for the warm welcome you gave us. We worked hard to make something we hoped you all would like and based on your feedback we pulled it off. A big thank you also to Erin Wright for letting us get started at Wide for the Win. Her feedback and advice has been invaluable. We hope to keep this flow of feedback going as we develop and deploy future features. (We have a lot of them).

On to the main event!

Your awesome feedback pointed out a number of issues to solve, changes you would like us to make, and features you would like us to add. There are also some things we can’t change. I’ll try to address all of that here.

As with any new widget we expected some hiccups. To our relief, they were not numerous. Many of them we anticipated (but were things we were unable to address until we actually saw them), while others were a matter of finding out what users wanted the features to do.

Issues to Solve

These are items that we feel warrant immediate attention.

Google Play

In the early morning of the 15th, we discovered a change in Google Play's reports that impacted some users' ability to see their sales on ScribeCount. These updates and changes are to be expected as each platform improves their own author portals. We have since coded a fix and pushed it to the service. You should be able to sync with Google now.

You’ll still need to make sure you are logging into the Google account that handles your books. If you are like me you have more than one and if you try to sync to an account with no books the software will keep looking for them…forever. Best thing to do is close all your Google accounts before you attempt to sync and then make sure it’s the correct account when you do.

If the problem persist its best to do a hard re-set. Delete your data from the platform, wait 20-30 seconds, then re-sync and login.

D2D

Earlier this week, some authors reported trouble with D2D. Many of you said that it took several tries before it would sync and download. We’ve checked everything and there doesn’t seem to be an issue on our end. We now believe this is a traffic volume issue on D2D’s end. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to fix this. You’ll need to be persistent and keep trying until they let you in.

Apple "free" books

There is an issue with how our system interprets the data from Apple, that is resulting in some users seeing free books where there should be none. We're investigating and will update as soon as it is fixed!

Apple not showing all your books

Apple doesn’t have a provision for “View all Books”. They only let us see 10 at a time. So for some of you this means there are books missing from your reports. We’ve already found a solution, but it will take a bit of time to code it and get it uploaded.

Safari/Apple devices

Just as certain platforms pose a unique puzzle, so do certain web browsers! Safari is taking longer to get up and running than the other browsers, but we hope to have it fully operational within a few weeks. Until then, there are issues related to that. ipads and iphones will be read-only until we get the Safari browser finished. How does that work? If you login to ScribeCount via a desktop or laptop and then link that desktop or laptop to your phone and/or tablet, you’ll be able to see ScribeCount, but you won’t be able to download data or perform any of the functions on the settings page. This issue should be solved once we have the Safari browser ready.

Amazon missing data

Many of you reported that your Amazon historical data was way off. This is an Amazon issue. They recently started storing data from 2016 back to 2009 in a separate place from the newer data. We have since coded a fix and uploaded it to compensate for this change. If your data is still off please try a reset of your Amazon link.

Merging, Tagging, Ghosting, and Series

Full confession: This feature was rolled out too soon and has a few problems as a result, we’re asking you NOT to use any of these features until we have the fixes in place as the update will delete the settings you have.

1) We still have some bugs to work out in the initial software.

2) We did not anticipate every user’s needs when it comes to sorting their books.

3) We forgot to include a way to edit your mergers.

This last item is a major issue. When merging titles the best analogy I can think of is making soup. It’s easy, right? You just combine the ingredients in the pot, mix it up with a spoon, and you’re done. But what if you add the wrong ingredient? What if the lid pops off the pepper you were adding and now the whole jar is in the pot? Now you have an issue that’s kind of hard to fix. Unmerging is akin to unmakeing soup.

Here’s our solution: We’ll be uploading a new merge function soon, but we’re adding step-by-step instructions to it to cut down on errors, and we're taking steps to save your settings daily so that you can revert back to a previous setting instead of needing to start from scratch.

o accomplish this is a rather large project as we have to merge all of your sales data, books, reviews, and ranks, before we can make the sorting features function and have the ability to save them.

(A quick note: all of these setting are processed only on our platform, so this will not affect any of the data from the sales platforms.)

A true “unmerge” option is something we’ll be thinking about, but until we come up with a solution we’ll have to resort to other methods. So please be patient, this fix will take a while to both code and test. Once we are confident it will work we’ll roll it out, but until then please merge carefully. For now, if you make a mistake and dump a whole jar of pepper in the soup, you’ll need to start over. (Which is definitely not something I did recently in real life. Definitely. Totally.)

Colors/Picking Your Own Colors

Several people pointed out that the colors are not consistent with every chart. This is due to each chart being a different widget with limited colors for each. We’ll be working on matching them up and making them consistent throughout the website.

When we chose the colors for the sunburst, we wanted them to align with the colors each platform used for branding. The orange, for instance, is the color of the smile in the Amazon logo. This wasn't as smooth in every case - Apple and Google both chose ALL the colors, for instance, and then some of the colors are actually trademarked!

One of the major requests at this time is picking your own colors. We understand that this is an accessibility issue, and are working to provide it. All we ask is a little bit of understanding, as this is a much bigger change than it might seem, and each change in the dashboard "ripples" out through the entire program. This will happen at some point!

Which Browser should I use?

We’ve seen nothing that would indicate that one browser is working better than any other. I know some of you have tried using a different one when the platforms were not syncing up, but the browser does not seem to have any influence on the platforms syncing or loading data faster.

Reviews and Ranks

Found the solution! Testing!

Things you want that pertain to what we have now

Totals in the Historical Chart above each days stack

This was a popular request and frankly we were surprised (and embarrassed) that we didn’t think of it ourselves. This will be in the next update.

More Currencies

We were asked to add New Zealand Dollars and we have; it will be included in the next update. (Are there any other currencies you would like? Please let us know here, or at support@scribecount.com!)

Manually added sales

This is a popular request, and we're happy to say that it was something we already had in the platform. In this case, we wanted to see how people were using the service and what features they were prioritizing before we worked on this. We’ll be completing the urgent updates and fixes before we start

We’ll first have a simple version with an amount, a date range, and a tag feature, and later on one that lets you better define the addition. You’ll be able to add as many as you wish. This should allow you to add income from sources that don’t yet report electronically, and also let you input sales from platforms we have not gotten to yet.

Next next update

More options in the Date Range tab

When finished we should have the following:

  • Today
  • Yesterday
  • Last Seven Days
  • Month-to-Date
  • Last month
  • Last 30 days
  • Last 90 days
  • Year-to-Date
  • Last year
  • All–time
  • Month…
  • Quarter…
  • Year…
  • Custom…

The month, quarter, and year options will have their own dropdowns as well. We’re also making it so that whatever date range you have chosen stays there until you change it again, regardless of whether you leave that page or not. If you sign out and back in, the dashboard will still default to Month-to-Date.

Overview of Sales

Somewhat related to the above; we’ll be adding a tile that shows the top date ranges and their respective totals so you can them without having to click around. Today, Last Seven Days, Month-to-Date, Year-to-Date, Last Month, and Last Year.

Changes you would like us to make

While we do not have specific updates or timelines on all of these, we want you to know that we have seen them and are prioritizing by a few criteria: scope, ripple effect to other changes, ability to work with other companies if necessary, frequency of the request, and more.

  • Sort by Author
  • Sort by Genre
  • Reviews by platform
  • Add data from old accounts into a platform
  • Kobo library sales and Kobo Plus and Overdrive
  • Assistant access / Cowriter access
  • Two accounts in one report - a brief note on this one, please email if you have multiple accounts, as we will manually adjust billing for you until we have the capability to have multiple platform logins under the same ScribeCount account!
  • Pen Name next to book name in the bookshelf
  • Pre-Orders
  • Comparative view
  • Sunburst by Book

Requested StoreFronts

  • SmashWords
  • IngramSpark
  • ACX
  • Findaway Voices
  • Radish
  • Eden
  • Payhip
  • Scrib
  • BundleRabbit
  • Don't see your favorite storefront listed here? Leave a comment!