WHO UNDERSTANDS AMAZON'S SALES RANKING?

Megan Fox wrote me, asking if I would explain Amazon's Sales Ranking.

{I was dreaming at the time, of course!}

Megan just wrote me again with some interesting figures from April of this year :

Interesting numbers:

- 28 out of 100 top e-books in Kindle Store are self-published; 11 are in top 50,
- all of those publications are priced $3.99 or less; that means 28% of top Kindle e-books cost less than $4,

- 18 of the titles are given the lowest possible price tag: $0.99,
- the shining star is John Locke with 8 titles (7 of them in top 50); Vegas Moon is the best self-published book – ranked #4,

- Amanda Hocking is sliding down; her best selling book, Ascend, is #64 (a result of signing a contract with a publisher?),

- authors to watch: Heather Killough-Walden, Julie Ortolon, J.R. Rain and Debbi Mack – with 2 or more titles in top 100.

{Megan being a "good" bad girl gave Piotr Kowalczyk credit for those figures. Her figure she takes full credit for!}


Ah, the ever popular "Amazon Sales Rank. Often debated, never fully understood. And Amazon never fully explains.

So we're left to speculate like the number-crunching data addicts that we (or at least some of us) are.

Not only can it indicate how a book ranks in sales to other books, but it can be used to approximate actual copies sold.

The ASR is a unique number that is constantly recalculated. For example if a book has an ASR of 100,000, then 99,999 other books sold more copies and approximately 4,900,000 books sold fewer copies at that particular time.

Rankings can spike due to large corporate purchases or heavy marketing promotions and are accurate only for the exact time they are calculated.

ASR’s from 1 – 10,000 are recalculated hourly. ASR’s from 10,001 to 110,000 are recalculated daily. ASR’s above 110,001 are re calculated monthly.

The ASR is based on a single ISBN (edition), not the book title. Therefore, the ASR for a title released as a mass-market paperback ISBN does not reflect the sales of that title as a hardcover edition, trade paperback edition, or special edition.

An average rank of 1,000 (or lower) means you have a seriously successful title;

an average rank of 10,000 means you’re doing pretty good for a book that’s no bestseller;

an average rank over 100,000 means it’s (your book is) not going to contribute significantly to your income.”

If you have a book on Amazon, for fun, you might :

Note when there’s a big spike in the number. Did someone review your book around that time? Did you post a comment on a blog or website the day before? Note the spikes in sales over time and what might have caused them.

So, why are we obsessed with our Amazon Sales Rank?

Well, no matter what the number may be, if the number is rising it means a sale, which means a royalty payment in the end.

It might not be much of a payment, but keeping your book at a higher sales rank definitely increases exposure,

which hopefully increases sales and increases money in your pocket.
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