Tokyo, March 5, 2015 – Rakuten, Inc. today announced that it has officially launched the Rakuten Books Dashboard, a selection of tools developed for publishers that allows them manage the sales of both their paper books and eBooks sold on the Rakuten Books online bookstore and Rakuten Kobo eBook Store*1 in Japan. Through using the tools, publishers will be able to start the pre-order sale of their products more quickly and manage sales data more easily than before.
The Rakuten Books Dashboard is aimed at publishers which have products on the Rakuten Books and Rakuten Kobo eBook Stores. By inputting information on books that are planned to be released, such as the date of release, the price, or recommendations, into a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet and uploading this sheet onto the Rakuten Books Dashboard, the information on the book will be automatically registered onto the product pages on Rakuten Books and the Rakuten Kobo eBooks Store. Previously, it took a number of days for the registered information on the books to be displayed on the product page, however, by using the Rakuten Books Dashboard, the time has been greatly reduced to just a few hours. The tools also enable publishers to display their own comments about their products on the product page, making it possible for them to communicate the appeal of their products in greater detail to their customers. In addition, publishers can view and download sales results data for both their paper books and eBooks*2, helping them to understand sales trends and manage their inventories.
From June 2014, a trial of the Rakuten Books Dashboard in which a beta version of the tools with limited features was provided to selected publishers. Based on the needs of publishers to improve the user-friendliness of the tools, a new feature allowing the registration of information on new products was added, and the Rakuten Books Dashboard has now been officially launched. Going forward, Rakuten will continue to improve the tools and add new functions that meet the needs of publishers, such as inventory checking and analysis report distribution.
Rakuten Books will continue to strive to provide more user-friendly functions to both publishers and customers on its platform.
*1. The Rakuten Kobo e-Book Store was integrated into the Rakuten Books website in October 2014.
*2. Fees apply to some services.