Do You Know Your Amazon’s Bestsellers Rank?
Or how you got there? What kind of algorithm are they using? AND, do you think your Sales Rank is achieved through reviews?
The good news: It’s not.
The bad news: It’s not.
If you’ve self-published and are beating your head against the wall trying to market and promote your book by badgering friends and relatives to post a review, you can relax.
According to Rob Nightingale in his April 2014 article, “8 Things Most People Don’t Know About Amazon’s Bestsellers Rank (Sales Rank),” Amazon won’t specifically state how the Bestsellers Rank is calculated.
So What Is The Amazon Bestsellers Rank?
In all Amazon book categories (including Kindle paid and free books), your title will include a “Product Details” section where all the stats are located. Included in those stats is the “Amazon Bestsellers Rank”. Nightingale, as well as Amazon’s own explanation for rank, the “calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales….”
Well, updated hourly for those who actively achieve sales per hour (in other words, the top 10,000 books are calculated hourly). That would not be the situation in my case.
The rank is based on sales, not reviews or ratings.
The common idea about rank is that it takes into account more than sales (and you were hoping reviews). The rank uses only sales (both recent and historical) and, of course, would not include sales to yourself.
Rates and reviews can be good for the soul, however, and still may help indirectly with your sales through positive, descriptive reviews.
Ready for more (bad) news? Books are weighted the same whether they are free or paid. (Time for another campaign.)
In other words, sales relative to other products within the same category. Amazon then splits “paid” and “free” into separate categories. Included in the algorithm is a predictive feature based on historical data. It’s becoming as confusing as the algorithm Google uses in their search engine ranking.
Here is the fun part–using these sales ranking calculations–books selling close to 1 book a day would achieve a sales rank of 50,000 to 100,000. (Calculations vary widely and produce as many results.)
When surfing my rankings, I noted the following for “Hot Air Promotions”:
Product Details· File Size: 12077 KB · Print Length: 197 pages · Publisher: Rose Point Publishing (November 5, 2013) · ASIN: B00GHMAH5I →On Thursday, December 3rd, #6,281 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Reference & Collections →On Monday, December 7th, #317 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Reference & Collections · Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,361,445 Paid in Kindle Store (ooh, ouch!) |
Apparently, the sub-category ranking change can be attributable to the sale of a single book last week and shows even a small ripple in the pool starts a sizable wave.
It’s time to play with those “sub-categories”.
Rosepoint Publishing 