Privacy Policy — Booktol Niche

Last updated: October 8, 2026

Booktol Niche is a Chrome extension published by Booktol for one purpose: helping authors and publishers research book niches on supported Amazon retail pages.

Data the extension accesses

• Public Amazon page content. On supported Amazon product, search, and Best Sellers pages, the extension reads visible book information such as title, price, ratings, review counts, category ranks, and Best Sellers Rank. Free sales and royalty estimates are computed from those ranks.
• Free rank and category lookup. To display missing rank and category-leader information, the extension may send keywords.booktol.com the ASINs, Amazon marketplace, and public category identifiers (such as a category name, node, or Best Sellers chart link) from the supported Amazon page you opened. If a limited public fallback resolves fresh rank information, the extension may contribute that ASIN, rank, and category information to Booktol's shared cache so other users do not need to repeat the same lookup. These public requests are not associated with a Booktol account and do not include the Amazon page URL, Amazon cookies, or Amazon login/session credentials.
• Optional Booktol account. If you choose to sign in, your email and password are entered on an extension-owned popup or account page and transmitted over HTTPS to Booktol's authentication service. Your password is used only to authenticate that request and is never stored by the extension. The extension stores your email and access token and, only when you select "Keep me signed in," a refresh token in chrome.storage.local.
• Pro research requests. When you deliberately use a Pro keyword feature, the extension sends the Amazon book identifier (ASIN) or search phrase being researched to keywords.booktol.com. For book research, it may also send the publicly visible price, rating, and review count shown on that listing so the requested report can include those metrics. Booktol returns modeled monthly-search estimates, keyword ideas, and catalog-competition information.
• Keyword explorer. A clearly Booktol-branded dropdown replaces native Amazon book-search suggestions while open. The Amazon suggestions switch restores native mode; ads and browser settings are unchanged. Packaged starting ideas use only Amazon's search input and visible book suggestions locally. After you enable live lookup, settled phrases and marketplace go over HTTPS to Booktol's indexed public keyword library and may be sent to Amazon's public book autocomplete. The dropdown separates device-only recent searches, Amazon suggestions and stored Booktol suggestions. Prefixes are not saved as database search-history or community events; suggestion responses may be cached for ten minutes. You can turn live lookup off. Private recent-search history is stored on your device for at most 90 days (up to 20 entries), can be cleared, and is never uploaded or used as a remote suggestion seed. Automatic competitor checks send displayed phrases to public Amazon Books search without credentials or referrers; counts cache locally for 30 minutes and can be paused. Avoid personal information in keyword research.
• Optional shared keyword discovery. A separate affirmative choice enables finalized Booktol searches, submitted Amazon book searches (Books department or explicit book terms), and Booktol idea clicks to contribute phrase, marketplace and event type to shared keyword discovery and monthly Booktol activity counts. Typed prefixes are never contributions. No Booktol identity, email, Amazon cookie or full page URL is attached. A random, scoped installation permission supports daily deduplication and deletion. Raw event text is encrypted at rest. Submitted phrases can become public Booktol suggestions after five distinct unexpired version-two or version-three installation permissions support them; their normalized words then enter a public lookup index. Clicks alone never publish a phrase. Public monthly counts also require five active installation permissions per phrase and calendar month. No identity is attached, but phrase text is free-form and may contain sensitive material; filtering cannot guarantee its removal. These are opt-in Booktol activity counts, not Amazon total searches, verified unique people, or input to a measured Amazon volume estimate. Sharing is off by default; viewing ideas never requires contributing. Previous trend-only consent does not authorize publication: a new affirmative choice is required.
• Optional keyword learning and competitor samples. A new version-three sharing choice also sends the finalized book-search phrase, up to twelve public Amazon autocomplete or related-search phrases, and matching-result samples (phrase, marketplace, number, whether Amazon says “over”, and check time). Nothing is contributed while merely typing. Booktol queues these encrypted batches and independently checks public Amazon book autocomplete and related-search surfaces. Independently confirmed public phrases can enter the shared library without the five-permission threshold; an arbitrary query echoed in a result heading is not public-phrase proof. Unverified searches remain encrypted and subject to the threshold above. Uploaded counts alone never supply public totals: saved database counts require Booktol's independent matching Amazon result-header check. They display as saved Amazon samples and expire from display after thirty minutes. They may vary by session and are matching books, not authors, sales, or monthly search volume. Older sharing permission does not enable these uploads; users must explicitly agree to version three. Sharing stays off by default and is not required to view suggestions. Before delivery, the extension keeps at most one hundred pending finalized learning batches on your device. They are eligible for upload for up to twenty-four hours and expired batches are removed the next time the extension's background worker runs. These local pending phrases are not encrypted by the extension; they are separate from private recent history and encrypted server jobs. A browser alarm retries temporary connection failures with backoff, including after a browser restart. Invalid batches are removed. Stopping sharing clears the local pending queue before requesting deletion from Booktol. No unfinished typing is queued. Server-side pending learning batches and their deduplication receipts expire after twenty-four hours; completed or permanently failed payloads are erased earlier. Raw submitted-search events have the separate 400-day limit.
• Password recovery. If you use "Forgot password," your email, confirmation code, and new password are transmitted over HTTPS solely to complete the requested password reset. They are not stored by the extension.

Data we do not collect

• Amazon or KDP login cookies, passwords, or session data; public fallback requests explicitly omit Amazon credentials
• Advertising account data
• Browsing history outside the Amazon book/search pages the extension runs on
• Payment card details (checkout is handled by Stripe)
• Advertising identifiers, unrelated analytics, or keyword contributions without the separately disclosed affirmative opt-in

How data is used

Data is used only to provide, maintain, secure, and improve the extension's disclosed book-research features. We do not sell personal data, use it for personalized advertising, or use it to determine creditworthiness. Service providers such as AWS Cognito and Stripe process only the information needed for authentication and payment.

Community query text is encrypted in the database. Contributions and their scoped permissions are removed by the next daily retention job after 400 days. Permissions cease to support public suggestions and counts at their exact 400-day expiry even before that purge. Only one search and one idea click per phrase, installation permission, marketplace and UTC day count. Use Stop sharing & delete my contributions in the panel to stop immediately and remove linked database events, queued learning batches and linked count samples. If offline, the deletion permission is kept only for retry; collection stays off. Uninstalling does not send a deletion request: use this control first. Deletion removes events from subsequently calculated counts and withdraws shared suggestion eligibility if support falls below five active permissions. Expiry has the same effect; public reads recheck support. Previously returned public suggestions may remain in clients' bounded ten-minute caches. Approved public catalog/autocomplete keywords are indexed separately and can remain after contribution deletion because their public provenance has been independently checked; private publisher fields, owner-scoped keywords and Ads reports are not promoted into the public discovery library. The sample has opt-in bias and quotas do not establish genuine unique people. Request bodies and Authorization headers must not be retained in operational logs. Backup expiration and access controls follow the production retention policy; restored backups must reapply deletion and expiry before serving data.

Storage and retention

Public Amazon rank data is cached locally to reduce repeated page requests. It refreshes after 24 hours and may remain visible for up to 7 days. Public rank and category records in Booktol's shared cache are not associated with a Booktol user account and are refreshed periodically to maintain accuracy. Signing out clears locally stored account tokens; removing the extension clears all extension-local data. Booktol account records and operational security logs are retained only as needed to provide and protect the service or meet legal obligations. You may request account deletion through Booktol support.

Chrome Web Store Limited Use

Booktol Niche handles information accessed through Chrome extension APIs in accordance with the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Affiliation

Booktol Niche is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon.com, Inc. Estimates are statistical models based on public ranking signals, not Amazon's private sales data.

Contact

Questions or data-deletion requests: Booktol Niche support.