Kindle Sales Rank

Depends on how long it's been out, and how all the other books at Kindle are making out; but yes, 100K going to 50K could be your Mom buying it.

Amazon sales ranks seem to be a decaying average with a fudge factor added/subtracted/multiplied/divided to keep B&N from finding out how many books Amazon is selling.

You could try setting up your book at Novelrank.com, but be aware that Novelrank is so inaccurate that Novelrank themselves warn that it's inaccurate. And Amazon also states that authors shouldn't base any decisions on sales rank, since their publishers, and only their publishers, know how many were actually sold.

Decaying Averages

The Traditional Average, the Mean, weighted all data, past and present, equally. While taking all the Data from the Stream into account, this measure lacks sensitivity to the Ordered nature of Data Streams. While the Short Term Average weights the most recent data more heavily, it immediately 'forgets' the past, replacing it with the present. We need an average, which takes the past into account while weighting data by its proximity to the present. Enter the Decaying Average. With the Decaying Average, each bit of Data enters the Data Stream and immediately begins decaying. The past is discounted but not entirely 'forgotten', as with the Short Term Average. Before going on let us discover the Decaying Average. Then we will examine its implications.

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Dannica, what I'm about to say may make you roll your eyes, but I keep an Excel spreadsheet with all my book titles listed. Once a day (about the same time each day), I record the sales rank at Amazon for all my e-books. At the end of the month, I have an average number that gives me a much better idea of how the book is doing overall. The rankings fluctuate so much, they don't really give you the best view IMO. One time your ranking might be 2,012 and then the next day it could drop to 112,000. Those numbers can be crazy-making.

When my sales rank jumps (down), then creeps upward, I assume the jump means one sale. This happens once or twice a week, so I assume I sell a couple of e-books per week. At least on Amazon!

I've been paying more attention to my actual sales figures than to my ranks. I do look at the rankings, but I don't give them more than a fleeting glance since it's not worth trying to figure out what they mean. At least sales figures are concrete and translate directly into $$.

When your rank is larger than about 50K novelrank.com does a fairly decent job of catching sales. It'll be in the ballpark.

When your rank is lower, and you getting lots of sales in close proximity their methodology breaks down terribly and you get wildly under reported sales (but you're doing a happy dance anyway because you're selling a pile of books.) It's probably your best bet to keep an estimate while waiting on BookBaby reports.

Novelrank is terrible. The more books you sell the less accurate it becomes. I've stopped using it.

merrihiatt said:

Dannica, what I'm about to say may make you roll your eyes, but I keep an Excel spreadsheet with all my book titles listed. Once a day (about the same time each day), I record the sales rank at Amazon for all my e-books. At the end of the month, I have an average number that gives me a much better idea of how the book is doing overall. The rankings fluctuate so much, they don't really give you the best view IMO. One time your ranking might be 2,012 and then the next day it could drop to 112,000. Those numbers can be crazy-making.

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Haha! I adore you. I do the exact same thing.

Thanks for making me feel either less-crazy or less-alone.

Novelrank can be off by a factor of five or more. However, they're more accurate than any other scheme I've seen proposed for translating Amazon sales ranks into actual numbers sold.

Amazon sales ranks are, in short, meaningless and a source of insanity among authors.

No sleep for Hugh and I as we continue checking rankings and book sales.

The Amazon rank is based on more than just sales. It also takes into account the popularity of the book on the website. So, if a lot of people are clicking on your book page, even if they don't buy the book, your rank will rise. Also, the ranking is based on previous sales, too, not just how the book is selling at that exact moment. For example, lets say you're selling 1000 copies a day for two weeks, and your rank is constantly sitting at about #75 on the main list. Then another writer comes along and he sells 1500 copies. His rank will be lower than yours because your previous sales are factored in. That won't change until he has a history of selling 1500 copies a day and the curve changes. Also, keep in mind that your rank depends on how all books on Amazon are selling that particular day. If it's a slow day for Amazon, and you're having a great sales day, your ranking might shoot up more than it would on a regular day.

Does that make any sense?

It's like people who make their book free for a few days, and they see their downloads skyrocket. They think they're getting a lot of sales the first day when they put a price back on the book, and they're probably selling a couple, but the rank is misleading because the rank is also measuring the popularity of the book and not just the sales.

It's confusing on the best days. What makes it even more frustrating is that Amazon is constantly tweaking the algorithm, so it's in constant flux.

Oh, and Novelrank counts each jump in rank as one sale. If you sell 500 copies between five o'clock and six o'clock on Tuesday, Novelrank will mark it as one sale. The only way that site is accurate is if your sales are low enough to where you don't have more than one sale an hour.

Dannica said:

Secondly can anyone with a Kindle book out there tell me any correspondence between the sales rank number and how many sales it might represent.

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Just for sh*ts and giggles, I'll throw out some of my numbers.

My steadiest selling self-published book (hops on and off erotica bestseller list) has been ranked in the high 3000s to low 5000s since October and sells 650-1000 copies a month. I've got some short stories that are reprints (well..rights reversions) that generally average 20-40K rankings. They sell 30-60 copies a month each.

My backlist books published through EC, Siren, etc are similarly ranked, some as low as the 1500s and some as high as 100ks. I have dozens of them and I've been getting royalty statements long enough to know what a consistent 20K or 10K or 2K ranking means in sales number terms.

Novel Rank is a hot mess. I think it "guessed" something like 128 sales for one of my books last month. Yeah, it sold, like, 950ish copies. So, um, yeah.

James D. Macdonald said:

Novelrank can be off by a factor of five or more. However, they're more accurate than any other scheme I've seen proposed for translating Amazon sales ranks into actual numbers sold.

Amazon sales ranks are, in short, meaningless and a source of insanity among authors.

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I use it just to get an idea of which books are moving at all and which aren't. The numbers aren't terribly accurate, but at least being able to see if anything has happened in the last few hours vs the last few days vs the last few weeks is enough to calm my OCD between royalty statements.

Out of sheer curiosity, I've been tracking how my Novelrank stats stack up to my royalty statements. As Brainstorm said, the more books you sell, the less accurate it is.

James D. Macdonald said:

...

You could try setting up your book at Novelrank.com, but be aware that Novelrank is so inaccurate that Novelrank themselves warn that it's inaccurate. And Amazon also states that authors shouldn't base any decisions on sales rank, since their publishers, and only their publishers, know how many were actually sold.

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James or anyone, any experience with Sales Rank Express which is free and describes itself as follows:

Sales Rank Express is an Amazon sales rank checker, designed for quick, up-to-the-minute checking of Amazon sales rank (or ranking) and other vital info about your own books or others that interest you.
======

Our small company recently launched 6 Kindle (non-fiction) books and several of them have moved in and out of top 100 status for several categories of sale's rank. I agree with other posters that trying to figure out the Amazon system is challenging and probably futile.

My premise is that Amazon is interested in making money, and on that basis I am not certain that as one poster suggests that interest in your book page by clicking to look at it, counts toward ranking unless it converts into an actual sale of your book. Amazon is not interested in people visiting, browsing, downloading samples, and etc. unless they can show to themselves that this behavior is a reliable precursor to sales and money for Amazon. If it "counts" at all, I'd expect that it has a very low factor weighting in their formula.

A Feb. 2009 article (http://patriciawalsh.com/AmazonSalesRank.htm) provides some interesting information, yet some of it is likely out of date. If your math skills are below average, I'd probably skip the article, and for most of us it is probably best to put energy elsewhere than trying to understand Amazon. They seem like Emerson to subscribe to the view that "... a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" or something like that.

lite1 said:

James or anyone, any experience with Sales Rank Express which is free and describes itself as follows:

Sales Rank Express is an Amazon sales rank checker, designed for quick, up-to-the-minute checking of Amazon sales rank (or ranking) and other vital info about your own books or others that interest you.

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Their engine that tries to convert rank to sales is powered by novelrank anyway. So, unless you have some other need or prefer their layout you can just use novelrank with the caveats discussed before--decent estimate for slow sales (50K - 1M rank) and more and more underreporting as you get more and more sales volume.

But really, just checking your sales directly is the way to go. If you're on Amazon, you just look. No slower than checking some other service. If you're distributed to Amazon through another service (Bookbaby, Lulu) well, you wait for the info. (As much as some people seem to obsess over short term numbers that delay is honestly probably a value for them--keeps them writing instead. )

For your own books you could of course use actual sales numbers. Delayed but presumably accurate.

I have no way of knowing about sales other than to ask my publisher, and he tells me. I'm not self-pubbed, but I'm seriously considering tossing three out-of-print books up, and adding another five completed novels, for a total of eight self-pubbed titles. Just considering the formatting and covers is enough to drive me bats--I'll have to pay someone to do it.

Tri

merrihiatt said:

Dannica, what I'm about to say may make you roll your eyes, but I keep an Excel spreadsheet with all my book titles listed. Once a day (about the same time each day), I record the sales rank at Amazon for all my e-books. At the end of the month, I have an average number that gives me a much better idea of how the book is doing overall. The rankings fluctuate so much, they don't really give you the best view IMO. One time your ranking might be 2,012 and then the next day it could drop to 112,000. Those numbers can be crazy-making.

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Oh God I'm doing the same thing. Run Like Hell has only been up for a week and I'm doing daily tracking haha

lite1 said:

James or anyone, any experience with Sales Rank Express which is free and describes itself as follows:

Sales Rank Express is an Amazon sales rank checker, designed for quick, up-to-the-minute checking of Amazon sales rank (or ranking) and other vital info about your own books or others that interest you.
======

Our small company recently launched 6 Kindle (non-fiction) books and several of them have moved in and out of top 100 status for several categories of sale's rank. I agree with other posters that trying to figure out the Amazon system is challenging and probably futile.

My premise is that Amazon is interested in making money, and on that basis I am not certain that as one poster suggests that interest in your book page by clicking to look at it, counts toward ranking unless it converts into an actual sale of your book. Amazon is not interested in people visiting, browsing, downloading samples, and etc. unless they can show to themselves that this behavior is a reliable precursor to sales and money for Amazon. If it "counts" at all, I'd expect that it has a very low factor weighting in their formula.

A Feb. 2009 article provides some interesting information, yet some of it is likely out of date. If your math skills are below average, I'd probably skip the article, and for most of us it is probably best to put energy elsewhere than trying to understand Amazon. They seem like Emerson to subscribe to the view that "... a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" or something like that.

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Hmmm, that's interesting

triceretops said:

I have no way of knowing about sales other than to ask my publisher, and he tells me.

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I would expect that you would know from your regular, itemized monthly or quarterly royalty report. You can also sign up for an author account on Amazon whether you are self- or publisher represented and see at least your print book sales in real time (direct Bookscan access).

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/landing?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Anyone have an idea on how long it usually takes Amazon to update sales numbers for a new book? Mine has been out for 48hrs and I'm ready to obsess over it.

I have seen some updates immediately and others within half an hour, still others have taken up to four hours to appear. There's no way of telling exactly when sales are reported, but sales rankings are updated hourly. That can be a helpful way to see if you are receiving sales. The closer you are to #1, the better. It is not uncommon to go from 100,000 in ranks to 40,000 or even 20,000 from one sale. The goal is to keep the rankings at around the same number, rather than bouncing around a lot. Steady sales accomplish that.

lite1 said:

Sales Rank Express is an Amazon sales rank checker, designed for quick, up-to-the-minute checking of Amazon sales rank (or ranking) and other vital info about your own books or others that interest you.

Click to expand...

Given that it derives its data from Novelrank.com, I think that "useless" would be a good description.