An Open Letter To Amazon Advantage

Dear Amazon Advantage,

I'd like to see Amazon create a better report for Advantage members.
The current report makes little sense to me and it is not very
detailed. I don't understand what "Sold last month" means when there
are two "Begin date" items: Feb. 20 and April 17. Was "last month" the
period from Feb 20 to April 17, or the month of March, or the period
from March 17 to April 17? It's as clear as mud to me.

Also I can't understand what "Amount due end of last month" means
because I'm not sure if you using the word month to mean a calendar
month or some irregular amazon reporting cycle, and also I don't
understand why my "Amount due end of last month" values are $0.00
despite having had sales. Maybe the report is not current? Also I show
$0.00 due at at the end of this "month" but I'd have sales. Why is
nothing due to me?

For the very large fees associated with the Amazon Advantage program,
I think Amazon owes it to us to produce a better report. Please
consider includes transaction details. I'd often like to correlate
advertising and marketing campaigns with sales, but I cannot do this
effectively without more detailed transaction info. Monthly summaries
are not detailed enough.

At the bottem of the report is a note which says:
"Due to software improvements, this page will always contain the most
current inventory and sales information."
But if that is true, they why is the "Amount due end of this month"
show a zero sum?

The report also says that:
"We removed lifetime-to-date sales for each item. Increased page load
times forced us to removed that field."
But as a software engineer myself, concern about "increased page load
times" seems like a silly excuse when all you have to do is break it
down by month and put links for each month is a calendar year. I
suggest your engineers visiting the Google Adwords site or the Paypal
site to get some good ideas on simple by effective reporting
techniques.

Finally, it would be a nice addition if you included at least the ZIP
code of the purchaser. I understand that the purchaser info is
confidential for location information doesn't jeoparadize anyones
personal information. Knowning at least the zip code would be very
beneficial for targeted marketing campaigns. If CA is my biggest
market, then I'm going to focus on independant booksellers across CA,
starting with the ZIP codes of my existing customer base. Please
consider providing that info to us! It's very valuable!

I appreciate my relationship with Advantage and hope my feedback helps
makes the Advantage program more effective for myself and all members.

Thank you,
Max Hodges
White Rabbit Press
www.whiterabbitpress.us

Hello Max...

The "begin date" is the date on which Amazon started selling your
title, and therefore could be years before. "Amount due at end of this
month" should equate to the figure for copies of the book "Sold last
month". The sales figures collate based on the calendar month -- and
now seem to change on or about the 1st of each month. I have my doubts
about sales which are being processed in the last couple of days
always making the right month's figure, but the worst that can mean is
that a small proportion of revenue is paid 30 days later than it
should be. If only other sellers would keep to their payment schedules
half as well as Amazon!

It is also not uncommon, particularly if you have a slow connection,
for the page to come up with all zeroes -- usually hitting "refresh"
corrects this.

I've also seen the reports and orders page get out of sync, so an
order marked as received does not show up on the reports page in the
inventory figure. However, I keep a running total in a spreadsheet
file and the total figure always balances with Amazon's figures at
some stage.

The reference to the "lifetime to date" figure not being included is
that the reports page used to include a "lifetime" sale figure -- in
theory the total sales of a title possibly going back to when
AmazonAdvantage started but which did not seem reliable...they put out
an email about this to Advantage clients a long time ago. I agree it
would be nice to see a "year so far" figure, but it is no great effort
to paste the monthly email report figures into a spreadsheet which
automatically gives you a total.

On your other suggestions, yes they might be nice to track individual
sales, but then you have to cope with, for example, the sales to
people who return the books to go back into stock and remember that
overall Amazon is trackjing the sales of millions of titles, though
many will be in single figures a year.

It would be nice if other retailers, wholesalers or distributors gave
the kind of information which Amazon does.

On 24 Apr 2004 01:38:24 -0700, maxhodges RemoveThis @hotmail.com (maxhodges)
wrote:

 >Dear Amazon Advantage,
 >
 >I'd like to see Amazon create a better report for Advantage members.
 >The current report makes little sense to me and it is not very
 >detailed. I don't understand what "Sold last month" means when there
 >are two "Begin date" items: Feb. 20 and April 17. Was "last month" the
 >period from Feb 20 to April 17, or the month of March, or the period
 >from March 17 to April 17? It's as clear as mud to me.
 >
 >Also I can't understand what "Amount due end of last month" means
 >because I'm not sure if you using the word month to mean a calendar
 >month or some irregular amazon reporting cycle, and also I don't
 >understand why my "Amount due end of last month" values are $0.00
 >despite having had sales. Maybe the report is not current? Also I show
 >$0.00 due at at the end of this "month" but I'd have sales. Why is
 >nothing due to me?
 >
 >For the very large fees associated with the Amazon Advantage program,
 >I think Amazon owes it to us to produce a better report. Please
 >consider includes transaction details. I'd often like to correlate
 >advertising and marketing campaigns with sales, but I cannot do this
 >effectively without more detailed transaction info. Monthly summaries
 >are not detailed enough.
 >
 >At the bottem of the report is a note which says:
 >"Due to software improvements, this page will always contain the most
 >current inventory and sales information."
 >But if that is true, they why is the "Amount due end of this month"
 >show a zero sum?
 >
 >The report also says that:
 >"We removed lifetime-to-date sales for each item. Increased page load
 >times forced us to removed that field."
 >But as a software engineer myself, concern about "increased page load
 >times" seems like a silly excuse when all you have to do is break it
 >down by month and put links for each month is a calendar year. I
 >suggest your engineers visiting the Google Adwords site or the Paypal
 >site to get some good ideas on simple by effective reporting
 >techniques.
 >
 >Finally, it would be a nice addition if you included at least the ZIP
 >code of the purchaser. I understand that the purchaser info is
 >confidential for location information doesn't jeoparadize anyones
 >personal information. Knowning at least the zip code would be very
 >beneficial for targeted marketing campaigns. If CA is my biggest
 >market, then I'm going to focus on independant booksellers across CA,
 >starting with the ZIP codes of my existing customer base. Please
 >consider providing that info to us! It's very valuable!
 >
 >I appreciate my relationship with Advantage and hope my feedback helps
 >makes the Advantage program more effective for myself and all members.
 >
 >Thank you,
 >Max Hodges
 >White Rabbit Press
 >www.whiterabbitpress.us

--
Gordon Woolf
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