We’re noticing this evening (6:30 p.m. Pacific) that sales rank is not showing up for any items in our Manage Inventory (we have mostly books, some CDs and DVDs). It’s not showing on the new or old Manage Inventory experience, and I’ve checked on Chrome and Firefox.
Scoutly app also devoid of sales rank (Scoutly usually displays current rank and average rank past six months).
I’m hoping this is a temporary glitch.
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I’m not seeing it in Manage Inventory, but I don’t recall just where it is supposed to be, so I might not be looking at the right place.
Listings and Keepa are still showing it, so the data is still out there, but I’m now scared to update Scoutly before going to a booksale tomorrow. If it starts working, let us know; meanwhile, I’ll keep my 2 week old database.
ETA: just looked, and the sales rank column was unchecked in my preferences. Checked it, and now seeing a blank column, so the same as you report.
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I just checked multiple workstations, in multiple states, & I’m seeing the same “- -” returned for Sales Rank on all of them, no matter what browser I launch from them.
Given that the new MYI Dashboard is quite-evidentially still a work in progress - some have reported that 16Sep2024 is the migration date they’re seeing, rather than the cut-off date we ourselves saw (29Aug2024) until finally being ‘borged’ into the supposedly-improved GUI on 31Aug2024 - it wouldn’t surprise me to find that you are correct in a hopeful presumption that this, too, will pass…
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No sales rank here either, just FYI.
-Ana
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We may have to rely on old-fashioned book scout knowledge and intuition.
I think that I’ll be okay.
It is sort of like a prepper looking forward to nuclear winter.
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I’m not good enough for that, and Nisha even less so (she’s the jewelry expert). It’s not so much that I miss the great books, it’s that I sometimes get excited over the ones that are complete stinkers. Scanning is less about telling me what to buy than it is telling me what NOT to buy!
Thankfully, I hadn’t gotten that far in prepping for tomorrow’s sale, so I’ll just keep the old data to be safe. Should work fine.
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I could not agree more. I could not count the number of times over the years that I have explained the same thing: It’s for eliminating, it’s not how my husband and I decide what and what not to buy. We don’t mindlessly scan every book, and we don’t even use the yes-or-no criteria function. What we do is use Scoutly’s data as just one of our decision-making tools, and we come home from sales with very few mistakes.
Unfortunately, even though we take this business seriously and actually turn a nice profit, some unfairly brand us as know-nothings based only on the fact we are skilled at using data as an effective tool. Sorry for the rant, but I have encountered too many snooty dealers at book sales. Yes, one certainly can be a learned, book-loving and successful dealer and still use a scanner. What’s that saying about judging a book by its cover?
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Another useless BOT or human that needs to be fired.
Forgive my sarcasm. Or lack thereof.
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Likewise. It seems that some of the “old-timers” find it offensive that someone would run a bookselling business as a BUSINESS. Discounting valid information simply because it wasn’t available in that format 30 years ago is just dumb (and I’m willing to bet that most of those people had SOME sort of source of information, just not as easy to use as a scanner).
That said, there are a lot of idiots with scanners at booksales. Sadly, many are also rude and inconsiderate, and ruining it for the rest of us. So I can understand some level of antipathy toward those of us using scanners.
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I’m mildly surprised that there haven’t been more reports of this situation over in the NSFE; so far the only discussion I see is this, which has but a single commiserating reply:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/8394c68a-563e-40e0-a7be-33d4b4fdf3f0
As it isn’t particularly unusual for Amazon to roll out changes/tweaks/etc. in a ‘block’ fashion - i.e., first one group of SoA Accounts, than another group, and so on until all ‘groups’ have been migrated to this or that new paradigm - it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this phenomenon is in play here…
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Don’t you think it might not be your type of dealer, who scans sometimes plus has book knowledge, but newbies or those w/ absolutely no book knowledge, scanning every singe title, no matter what category, that the snooty ones abhor?.
We’re not as lucky as you. We’ve made a lotta mistakes over the years: quirky long-tails that I assumed would sell quicky; overstocked mysteries/fiction which we rarely purchase anymore.
Personally, I love A&L, but my enthusiasm for criticism/essays or or even leather-bound classics like Austen/Dickens/Trollope apparently aren’t shared by the majority of today’s reading public(Austen’s P&P, received a 1 star rating on AMZ because it was “too slow,” Did this critic expect Lizzie to whip out her phone, text Mr. Darcy?).
As to where the sales rank went-all we see is— under Units Sold/ Page Views/ Sales Rank. Hey, Wait!! when checking-rank has returned to approx. every 5 or 6th title!! Halleluiah!!
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Again, could not agree more!!!
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Overnight, Scoutly first had the current rank restored, and as of sometime this morning both the current and average rank is back. On Manage Inventory, rank is starting to come back, but only for a few items so far, as @TEXASEXILEBOOKS noted.
I wonder what accidental or purposeful event occurred, especially considering that at least one API was affected.
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Sales Rank has now come back, on the new MYI Dashboard, for all but our “Closed” Offer-Listings (we have some of those which we cannot delete, as is best practice for ASINs one has no intent to ever sell again [or even if one does harbor thoughts of doing so in the future], because the Catalog & FBA Teams came up with a workaround for a IPQ contribution made improperly by a Mexican 3P Seller which left those long-superseded ASINs as ‘anchors’ for the Variation Relationship Sets of which they were original ‘Child’ members).
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For years I’ve been expecting Amazon to hide rank information and sell it out the digital back door. I am truly surprised that they have not done this.
Given their ‘screw the small seller if we can make another buck’ mindset, I still expect it to happen.
Sure, suppressing it might inhibit sales to the few readers who reflexively buy whatever is popular, but those sales can be recouped through an AI-powered ‘recommended reads’.
It is only a matter of time, IMHO. And AI is making that time short.
You have been warned.
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