Getting Started with Magic Bakeshop

A few key terms

First, let's define a few terms as they're used in the Bakeshop.

Database

The file which contains your imported data. You may choose to have a single database hold everything, or have a different database for each year, or each pen name, or whatever. Your choice. The program only operates on one database at a time, though.

Currently, database files should end in .db

Sales data files

These are the files which you get (download) from Amazon KDP, PubIt, etc, that contain the sales and royalty reports for a given time period. These may be Excel spreadsheets (.xls), formatted text files (.txt), or CSV (comma-separated value) text files that spreadsheet programs can import. Each seller has its own format.

Do not modify the files prior to importing them to MagicBakeshop; if you change the format, the program may not be able to process it.

Data source

Magic Bakeshop tracks each data file you import, so it always knows the original source of each entry. To see a list of import files, select List loaded files from the View menu.

Vendor or Seller

These are interchangable terms (although "vendor" will probably be phased out), referring to the outlet where your books are sold. These are the outlets you deal with directly, and get sales reports from, not indirect outlets (those are called channels).

Currently Magic Bakeshop recognizes data from the following sellers: Amazon, Apple, ARe (All Romance Ebooks), B&N (PubIt), CreateSpace, Comixology, Google Books, Graphicly, and Smashwords.

How to get started

It's easy. If you're reading this help file, you've already figured out how to start the program. The next steps are:
  1. Create a database file
  2. Import your sales data
  3. (repeat as necessary)
  4. Use the View and Tools menus to analyze your sales
  5. Optionally, export the database to an Excel spreadsheet
  6. Exit (the data is always saved)
If you are working with an existing database file, step 1 would be to Open it rather than to Create a new one.

Analyzing your sales

This is where you'll probably spend most of your time (at least, this author and indie publisher does). (But alas, this help document is still a work in progress...)