How Data is Imported
Book Report can import data from several publishing platforms. Hopefully it feels like magic - you click a few buttons, and then your data shows up in our reports. This page pulls back the curtain to give an overview of how that magic works.
The Browser Extension
When you install Book Report, it will ask for permission to access your data on Amazon's website. If you connect wide accounts, each one will require additional permission. These permissions allow Book Report to send requests to these services on your behalf, and that is how we import your data.
When you visit a distributor's sales reporting interface, your browser sends requests and shows you the result. Book Report mimics this process, but instead of showing you the data, the data is processed and sent to our servers. We've diligently gone through the reporting interfaces of each distributor to figure out how exactly they'd like requests to be formatted, and what format they respond with.
The data stored in our servers is used to generate any report you'd like. We also keep track of what data has been fetched and what still needs to be fetched, so that we don't make unnecessary requests.
You can install the browser extension by following the links on our Getting Started page.
The Web App
How does Book Report update your data when you aren't using the browser extension?
Websites detect whether you're logged in or not by looking at your cookies. If you send a request with the right cookies, the website will respond as if you were logged in. When you run Book Report's browser extension, it sends a copy of your cookies to our server. It only sends cookies for the websites you've given it permission to access.
When the browser extension isn't running, Book Report uses your stored cooked to access your data. Because cookies can expire or be invalidated, this process is less reliable than using the browser extension. But it is good that cookies work this way! Most distributors won't allow you to do anything too important (like changing your banking information) using just cookies; those actions require your password, which Book Report will never ask you for.
If you're having trouble with data not updating, try running the browser extension again.
You can open the web app by visiting app.getbookreport.com on any browser.
The Bookmarklet
The bookmarklet is the third and final way Book Report can access your data. Running the bookmarklet adds a couple of steps to the process of launching Book Report, but the trade-off is extra flexibility: Once you’re set up, you can keep your KDP data up-to-date without using the browser extension.
When you run a bookmarklet on a specific page, you are giving it access to the data on that domain. Our bookmarklet detects which domain its running on, then makes the requests it needs to get update data. Once your data is updated, it redirects you to Book Report.
The downside of this approach is that you have to run it manually every time you want to update your data. The upside is that there's a way to run the bookmarklet on almost any computer or mobile device.
At this point, the bookmarklet is only available for KDP. If you'd like us to add support for the other distributors, please let us know.