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Post by AD on Jul 3, 2020 16:21:22 GMT
It looks like all my revenue data has shown up. That's good news.
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Post by BlueAndGold on Jul 3, 2020 22:15:24 GMT
YAY!!!  Mine has too. Finally! Excellent! |
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Post by Deadshot on Jul 4, 2020 7:29:06 GMT
Yep, same here. However, it only shows the sales/revenue of one book and all the sale dates are the same.
Let's be positive and say that is a step in the right direction.
Finally.
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Post by benziger on Jul 4, 2020 7:47:05 GMT
Not really what I wanted, but at least some change:
Internal Server Error Someone tripped over a cord. We're working on getting everything plugged in again.
Error ID: 279974b8a6ad45c8b6033d7fe17e8a0b
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Post by BlueAndGold on Jul 4, 2020 12:39:45 GMT
The new csv file is much more detailed than the old one. It leaves very little to the imagination. I think it is a big improvement.
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sirram
Senior Printer
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money
Posts: 269
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Post by sirram on Jul 4, 2020 13:13:47 GMT
The new csv file is much more detailed than the old one. It leaves very little to the imagination. I think it is a big improvement. Good News / Bad News for me. Good news is that sales & revenue data has at last appeared. Hallelujah! Bad news is that Lulu has changed the layout of the csv file (which has duly broken all the formulae in my Excel spreadsheet). To explain - before each committee meeting of our local history society, I prepare an updated book sales report. Firstly I download the csv file from Lulu (but only for the date range since the last report). This I paste into a tab in my spreadsheet. The formulae in the spreadsheet's main tab duly recalculate in a split-second - which means that committee members can see precisely how many books (per title) have been sold since the last report, how many in total, profit since the last report and profit to date. My formulae also distinguish between Internet sales versus books purchased by our Publications Officer (to sell locally). I can see that the new csv layout has more columns (which I will have to analyse). But what happened to the date range selection facility? All one can now do is download the whole thing from day 1 (which, in our case, was years ago). I did figure out the original csv record layout so will hopefully figure out this one as well but, at first glance, what have they done to the date column? In the old csv, a date might be: "31/01/2020". But in the new layout, I am seeing dates like: "2020-05-31T00:00:00-04:00" and "2019-11-07T20:18:17.388000-05:00" Are these Lulu's internal database dates (Oracle perhaps)? this extra detail may be interesting to system developers but none of Lulu's customers needs anything other than yyyy-mm-dd. I suppose I will need a new formula to chop everything after these first ten characters. The good news is that I still have all my past book-sale spreadsheets which means, once I've figured out the new layout, I should be able to tell whether Lulu's migration of this data is 100%. |
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Post by BlueAndGold on Jul 5, 2020 1:41:07 GMT
Yes, I spent quite a while changing the new format to match my spreadsheets. But then I found that it was easier simply to adopt the new format. Sighhhh...
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sirram
Senior Printer
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money
Posts: 269
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Post by sirram on Jul 5, 2020 12:15:45 GMT
Yes, I spent quite a while changing the new format to match my spreadsheets. But then I found that it was easier simply to adopt the new format. Sighhhh... Agreed with that. But first, I've been comparing a single sale of one of our books, which took place on 31st August 2019. It is A5, paperback, 94pp. I still have a copy of a csv downloaded from the old platform, so am in a position to compare, column by column, with the new csv. Apart from the new record layout being radically different, they key points appear to be: Date column: Old=31-Aug-2019, New=2019-08-31T00:00:00-04:00 ( a completely pointless over-complication for the end user) Reference Number: Old=DIST_6920631, New=DIST_166054028_20190906_20190831_7380562 ( don't mind, so long as I can quote if there is a problem) Self-Purchase (y/n): ( a useful column, which wasn't on the old csv where one had to use other fields to deduce it) Title: unchanged (Good!)Channel: Old=Ingram (Print), New=LSI ( I understood Ingram, but what does "LSI" mean?) Finally, the new csv contains numerous additional money columns. But the key one (Payee Revenue) - at least in the record I checked - is identical to the old csv ( thank goodness!) Next steps are: a) to check a sale which was a self-purchase b) update my Excel formulae to see if Lulu has migrated sales & revenue with 100% accuracy (from day 1 up to date) You never know, I might even summon up courage to order some more books! |
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Post by BlueAndGold on Jul 5, 2020 12:30:35 GMT
Don't let the Payee Revenue column and the Conversion column mess you up. (International currency conversions.)
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Post by benziger on Jul 5, 2020 13:41:52 GMT
Channel: Old=Ingram (Print), New=LSI ( I understood Ingram, but what does "LSI" mean?) Could it be Lightning Source Ingram, the business to business part of Ingram Group? |
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sirram
Senior Printer
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money
Posts: 269
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Post by sirram on Jul 5, 2020 13:52:29 GMT
Channel: Old=Ingram (Print), New=LSI ( I understood Ingram, but what does "LSI" mean?) Could it be Lightning Source Ingram, the business to business part of Ingram Group? Hmm! (Thinking!). No, it's Lulu Somewhat Incompetent. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2020 15:29:00 GMT
Could it be Lightning Source Ingram, the business to business part of Ingram Group? Hmm! (Thinking!). No, it's Lulu Somewhat Incompetent. This is what I found:
The POD manufacturer Lightning Source International (LSI), owned by Ingram Content Group, announced on Friday (yes, a typical release-bad-news-on-Friday-and-hope-nobody-pays-attention move) that LSI will no longer be distributing directly to Amazon, B&N, Baker & Taylor, Espresso Book Machine, and NACSCORP, and to other wholesale distributors in the U.S. Instead, all titles will now be distributed only via Ingram Book Group, who in turn will resell to all retailers and other wholesale distributors. What this means is that Ingram, who previously did not earn a fee on LSI sales to the aforementioned Amazon et al, will now earn a cut of all LSI sales, regardless of the customer. The move will be rolled out over the coming months, and is intended to be fully in place by mid-2015.
The whole article is useful:
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sirram
Senior Printer
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money
Posts: 269
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Post by sirram on Jul 5, 2020 17:46:45 GMT
Yes, I spent quite a while changing the new format to match my spreadsheets. But then I found that it was easier simply to adopt the new format. Sighhhh... Agreed with that. But first, I've been comparing a single sale of one of our books, which took place on 31st August 2019. It is A5, paperback, 94pp. I still have a copy of a csv downloaded from the old platform, so am in a position to compare, column by column, with the new csv. Apart from the new record layout being radically different, they key points appear to be: Date column: Old=31-Aug-2019, New=2019-08-31T00:00:00-04:00 ( a completely pointless over-complication for the end user) Reference Number: Old=DIST_6920631, New=DIST_166054028_20190906_20190831_7380562 ( don't mind, so long as I can quote if there is a problem) Self-Purchase (y/n): ( a useful column, which wasn't on the old csv where one had to use other fields to deduce it) Title: unchanged (Good!)Channel: Old=Ingram (Print), New=LSI ( I understood Ingram, but what does "LSI" mean?) Finally, the new csv contains numerous additional money columns. But the key one (Payee Revenue) - at least in the record I checked - is identical to the old csv ( thank goodness!) Next steps are: a) to check a sale which was a self-purchase b) update my Excel formulae to see if Lulu has migrated sales & revenue with 100% accuracy (from day 1 up to date) You never know, I might even summon up courage to order some more books! Well, I spent this afternoon revising my Excel formulae to work with the new csv layout. Luckily, I still have csv data from the old Lulu platform and, after comparing the two, it does look as though Lulu has migrated my sales & revenue data 100% accurately. But, so far, only up to the end of May 2020. |
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Post by BlueAndGold on Jul 5, 2020 21:31:15 GMT
Thank you, sirram. That is reassuring. |
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