Robyn Sarty
The Toronto Indie Author Conference in early May saw a new face in the indie author world. But though Toronto was his first conference, Liam Gray is not new to publishing. And the branded T-shirt he wore signified he’d been around for a while, as many recognized the iconic colorful circle logo of his company, Book Report.
Book Report, a book sales analytics tool that touts itself as a “simple and powerful” live sales dashboard, has been used by indie authors for years, but until recently, it was limited to one platform: Amazon.
No longer is that the case. Gray, a self-taught software developer, has cracked the code to enable authors to add not just their KDP reports but also their sales reports from wide platforms such as Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Draft2Digital, with more being added each week. While these features are reliable and available to anyone, they’re currently in “public beta” and will remain so for another couple of months.
When asked why he first created the program, a browser extension that links to your publishing accounts and displays the data in a clear and pleasing format, Gray said he made it for himself. In 2014, when he first graduated high school, in an effort to earn money, he published a series of novels under a pen name. But he quickly found the native tools on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard to be limited. Deciding he could make something better, he put his fledgling coding skills to work. And he was kind enough to share his creation with his author friends.
One of the first additions to his project was a request from his friends on K-Boards and remains a user favorite to this day: an optional cha-ching that sounds every time a new sale is registered.
“It wasn’t a day 1 feature, but it was a day 2 feature,” Gray says with a chuckle.
Since then, he’s been working hard to improve his skills, creating new features, updating the code, and now, adding additional retailers. It’s a pain point many authors have asked to solve, and he’s happy to finally be able to offer a solution. One other feature he’s committed to offering is a free tier. Book Report costs just $19 per month, but only for authors earning $1,000 per month or more. For anyone earning less than that, you can access all the features—including that “cha-ching” sound—for free.
Most people would be surprised to learn that Book Report is not a big company; it’s just Gray and his golden retriever, Molly. At one point in time, he outsourced the customer service, but no longer. Pointing to his smart watch, Gray jokes that every time someone emails, his wrist buzzes. Yes, it can be distracting, but he says, “I want to stay connected and gather the feedback directly from the authors.”
In addition to Kindle Direct Publishing, the complete list of distribution platforms currently compatible with Book Report through the open beta includes Draft2Digital, Google Play Books, Kobo Writing Life, Barnes & Noble Press, ACX, Apple Books, Findaway Voices, IngramSpark, and Smashwords via Draft2Digital. Learn more about how Book Report integrates with these retailers and watch for updates at https://support.getbookreport.com/hc/en-us.
Robyn Sarty
