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r/eroticauthors•
ides205

Quick word of caution on BR

NSFW

Hey guys - just a quick post so you don't make the same mistake I just did. If you like your Book Report data to go all the way back to the beginning of your career, go to the settings page and download it so you have a backup that you could later restore.

Today I cleared my browser cache because of some issue, and now all my old BR data is gone - it only goes back the last 3 months, like on the KDP page. I guess I never put much thought into how BR keeps all the data older than that. Now I know: they don't! You do! In your browser cache!

I suppose if I had to, I could recreate the charts and shit from the data in my monthly royalty reports, but what a PITA.

So wise up kids, and don't clear your shit without backing it up.

Posted Sep 8, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

1321
ElannaReese•

BR had to change things up, it used to go back all the way, but then Amazon said, "Hey, BookReport Dude, your app thingy is killing our servers, how about you limit it to recovering only 3 months of data at a time?"

And BookReport Dude said, "okay."

So it holds indefinite data, but if you get a new computer or something else happens, you'll have to import any data older than 3 months.

When I get my royalty report, I just export the data. But I only started this after realizing I am missing a month somewhere along the line of switching or updating comps. :)

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

See, now it would have been nice if BR issued some kind of warning like, "Hey, have you ever backed up your data? If you clear your history or change computers, you'll lose it, so consider downloading a backup today. It's easy - one click! We'll remind you to do this again every month!"

I wonder if I could backwards engineer their backup file and upload it? That would be quite a little project...

ETA: FUCK I COULD TOTALLY DO THAT! Well not exactly - I wouldn't get the data for each individual day, but I could take my monthly totals, average it out and plug it in for each day. I could enter that so I'd at least be able to use BR for how much I made each month, and how much I've made going back all the ay. I could then enter it into this backup file and upload it! It could totally work!

ETA2: and, confession to make: I keep a running spreadsheet on my own of how many total pages and units I have every day, although I don't note which titles they came from. So, I could even put my daily totals back into Book Report, I just won't know which books they came from precisely. I could use the KDP reports to know how much of each book sold what for a monthly period, so I could spread out the right numbers of pages/units to the right books over the right time period, just not on the exact days. But that's not bad at all!

3
ElannaReese•

See, now it would have been nice if BR issued some kind of warning like, "Hey, have you ever backed up your data? If you clear your history or change computers, you'll lose it, so consider downloading a backup today. It's easy - one click! We'll remind you to do this again every month!"

Yeah, I remember the announcement coming out about the 3 months data and I think it's hidden away somewhere, but a reminder would be doubly nice :)

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author_austinstoneForeskin Wrangler•

BR had to change things up, it used to go back all the way, but then Amazon said, "Hey, BookReport Dude, your app thingy is killing our servers, how about you limit it to recovering only 3 months of data at a time?"

Also, they said "actually, it's not supposed to do that" and then patched it--now it's impossible to get more than 30 days of data back.

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Sexybecky69There's No "I" in "Bukkake"•

What if you want to forget about the period of suck from the old day? :)
In all seriousness, thank you. I was wondering that myself a few days ago.

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

Oh, but I used to be able to look at it and think about how far I've come! The way the beginning of the chart looked compared to how it looks now... I'll miss it. Oh well - like I said, I could take the numbers from the KDP monthly reports and enter all of it into Excel or whatever and generate nice looking charts. BR just does it all for you.

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Alexandra_Ortigas•

I guess you could take it as motivation to get even more successful so that the current beginning of the chart will look equally unimpressive in a few months as the beginning of time?

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

Yes, I like it!

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TashaMoonNice•

That happened to me when I go a new computer. Whoops.

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lizzieelmwritesThat romantic scene? It's about boning.•

That happened to me too.

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kaymcdammitRear Admiral•

Been there :(

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YourSmutSucksall advice can be boiled down to "DON'T OVERTHINK"•

Happened to me recently. Had my whole career on it, now it's only until May. Annoying because I use BR to guesstimate on taxes and shit.

Since then every week I make it a point todownload the data.

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

:( That sucks man - and I'm guessing Amazon would never be willing to send out a day-by-day breakdown of sales, even though they totally have that information...

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ElannaReese•

You have it. In your Royalty reports.

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

Day-by-day? I thought they just gave you totals for the month.

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ElannaReese•

Yeah, but it still gives you data per book. Plus, it also gives you markets. For some reason, I remember seeing date ranges on earlier reports, but didn't pull up my earlier stuff. However, that day to day information would put a load on their servers when generating reports. What about the authors who have 100 books selling huge numbers every day?

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

Phew! Glad I'm not the only one at least...

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Doctorstroh•

Looks like I know the first thing I'm doing when I get home.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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ides205OPFakin' it till I'm makin' it•

Yeah, a good PC backup would have come in handy, this is true.

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BillWriterKinkmonger•

I email important documents to an online email account setup for backups only. I don't give it out. So if I need to see/copy/backup the document it is in that email account which also gives me a time stamp, plus I can forward any important attachments from other email account there as a backup or vis-a-versa.

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