Any ideas? Clueless. I just sold two more books and my ranking jumped more than a hundred thousand points. I have no idea what's going on with that thing.
Posted by babooher (Member # 8617) on :
Do a screen capture and use it for publicity.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
Sales seem to cause big jumps, which then tail off fairly steeply until the next sale. Reviews, not so much, although hopefully they influence buyers. I think until you start making a certain level of sales (which I have yet to figure out how to do), the rankings are just too volatile.
Wondering what, if any, effect Amazon's purchase of Goodreads is going to have on the whole thing. Will Goodreads reviews appear on Amazon or affect Amazon rankings? Will Amazon start banning authors from reviewing other authors work on Goodreads, too?
Time will tell.
Posted by MJNL (Member # 9686) on :
As far as I understand it, the only thing that has an effect on Amazon rankings is sales, nothing else. And the reason a few sales can equal a huge jump is because most books don't sell squat. I don't know what your sales numbers in particular look like, but when you're sitting in amongst a group of books that have sold 50 copies and then you sell two more, you've just outsold those other books by a noticeable percentage, and so your ranking jumps.
I'll disagree with babooher--a screen cap isn't going to do anything for your marketing, unless your sales ranking is at least in the 000,000s. If your rank is something like 1,000,001 that (theoretically) means there are a million books selling better than yours, and that's not going to impress anyone.
Again, this is based on my understanding of how Amazon's sales rankings are supposed to work, which could be incorrect.
Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :
My sales numbers are nothing to write home about, for certain. But it's only been up a couple of weeks, and I just got my first review. Right now my rank for fantasy Kindle books is approx 2100. Which means what? I have no idea. Thing is, the ranking is still going up, but my sales report numbers are not.
*shrug*
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
Yeah, sales are the big driver but not the only one. I don't think anybody has quite figured out Amazon's algorithm.
I know on at least one occasion my ranking went up for no discernable reason at all.
Posted by redux (Member # 9277) on :
Scalzi put up a post on his blog last year sharing his views on Amazon's rankings.