Everything is so synoptical. They are planning to add the category analyzer as well.
It saved quite a lot of my time. And their support is very nice too, very quick in response, polite, willing and open to suggestions. The whole BookCore app is for free and there is a demo version on their site as well — which does not require any registration. You can just give it a try. Really saves a lot of time and effort. Hopefully, it is going to be as helpful for you as it is for me.
The website is https: A very informative article. Thank you for sharing all this info with us. Thank for the very helpful article. However, I am not convinced that page reads affect ranking at all. I have a 7-book crime thriller series and track their ranking [hence their visibility daily. I have identified the parameters that define the search ranking, and the parameters that define the LQI. However, would love to have a chat with you on the parameters for BSR, and the weights of the variables for all 3 ranking calculations. Please let me know if you would be interested in a short conversation where you might be able to guide us in the right direction.
Shayak I am interested in your service, is it available yet?? If this is true, is there a way to find out the release dates of books that are expected to be super sellers? So that Indie authors are able to release around the dates of those books to maintain their ranking? Just wondering if that would help. So our quick tip: Just search for niche specific pages or forums. For example my rank went from to and then has slowly risen gotten worse yet the lower scores were lost.
Now my graph goes from to in a straight line and all of the better rankings disappeared. So my rank increased in a spike, but went back to like a lower spot by the end of the free period. I care about the overall sales, not some mystical ranking system. What does that mean? Does that mean no single sales yet for the new released book??. Thank you for the excellent article! Will be reblogging this at http: Thank you for this.
For example, my first novel, having sold far more copies than any of my other books since its publication, tends to fluctuate in ranking much less than my other books, even during dry spells. Am I even making sense?
There is loads of misinformation here. Verified reviews and numbers of reviews affect ranking. Performance Factors are all. I was able to read all of the tech including the coding for the algorithm during my research. Your ranking explanation does not make sense. This has no relation to what actually goes on with the way the algorithm shows results. You say ranking does not guarantee exposure. Yes, it does, but based on sales against profit for Amazon.
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My article is due up this week, one of many in a mammoth tour of the algorithm explained by those who coded it and who work with algorithms every day, not authors. I hope to debunk this spate of confusion. This article is specifically about Best Seller ranking, which is not affected by reviews or ratings, either in quality or quantity.
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I hope you will share more concrete information in your article, and I look forward to reading it. The manipulation of keywords and phrases can skyrocket a book into the Top 10 AND keep it there even with little-to-no sales. So how does that correlate to the math in this article? Or are you only speaking about the Kindle rank and not the categories? The two are not equal. John, thank very much from me as well. Have you written in the past on the algorithm Amazon uses for featuring books e.
Hi Andy, Thank you! The statement above is not possible. If you think about it for a minute, you will see that this must be true. After monitoring a very low-ranked book over about a week, I would say there is a lot of jitter caused by a relatively tiny percentage of the over 2 million Kindle books that have rankings at any one time. Check the calculations yourself doing sales of , , , , , , , over a 9 day period to see that there is no way to maintain a rank with half your initial sales. The comparison here is not to the peak rank achieved, but rather the difference between sales needed to hit a specific rank from a cold start compared to the sales needed to maintain that specific rank.
You may need more than 9 days of data to see that pattern clearly, and as Phoenix pointed out below, the actual time frame may not be as simple as the example here suggests, even if they do eventually converge at the same numbers. The KU not adding weight to your ranking is a blatant lie. I enrolled one of my books recently and within less than 1 hour, my rank went up spaces. KU is heavily favored to pushing your rank up. I had exactly the same experience.
I took screenshots before I listed the book in KU, the next day when it had been live in KU for 12 hours, and the day after that when it had been live in KU for 36 hours. It continued to make dramatic increases in sales rankings for the first week after I added it into KU, and then started to drift back down.
Literally not one sale. So the only thing influencing the ranking was the addition of KU into the mix. Amazon is really helping out books that are enrolled in KU. You cannot argue otherwise because the facts are damn clear. I really, really hate being dependent on the capriciousness of Amazon, and decided it was better to go wide.
What rank were you at when you enrolled your book, and did you receive any downloads when your rank changed? Simply I was not used at all to look at the page read numbers since the line had always been flat. But then I was surprised to see it going to the pages read on the first day and finally pages of my book were read in a couple of days.
So the only explanation is that KU has a similar effect than books actually bought.
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The only quibble I have with the post is with the historical sales calculation. My belief is that the historical weightings were changed around May 1, , in the US to better reward protracted sales and punish promo spikes. These are ad-hoc observations only, but since I was one of the first to observe and comment around the difference between sales to hit and sales to maintain 2 or 3 years ago, I have a fairly good handle observation-wise.
And if better testing of the calc has been done than my armchair studies have been done which is exactly what we need to be seeing more of! Thank you for sharing your findings! Have you seen any indication of a step function being applied to sales rank? You know, I saw that report too a year or two ago and commented extensively on it over on KBoards at the time. So in the US, at least, we came pretty close to the same result using independent methods.
Is there any way to determine how many books have been sold depending on starting sales rank? For example, if a book is listed at ,, and the sales rank goes up better by 10,, how many sales does that translate to? I was excited once when my sales rank increased by ,, and my publisher said that probably meant I sold one book! That presents a much more complete picture that makes it easier to extrapolate sales estimates from.
Sales rank is not an effective metric beyond the , mark or so in my opinion. But the closer you get to 1, and the more sales that are needed to climb a rank, the more that volatility smooths out. Sales rank does help with visibility, which is one way to be seen; showing up in search results is also awesome but different.
Authors will probably need to create systems that drive traffic to their book. Find a system and focus on growing it, by either boosting the traffic, or increasing the conversion. You mention that only sales impact rank, but sales are made through a complex process that includes the book cover, the description and the reviews — all used to build trust and hook the reader, giving them a desire to buy the book and overcoming buyer resistance. Those are things that can all be constantly monitored and improved, until things are working.
Awesome article though, I really appreciate the research and details that went into this. Have you developed a recognizable brand?
Amazon Sales Rank: Taming the Algorithm
Do you engage with your potential readers in the places they socialize? Are your books as appealing and professional as they can be, with high quality covers, editing, and promotional copy? This is interesting, but even for a numbers guy like me, the ranking has little actual meaning unless a book is at the top of the heap. When the book drops down to 15, or 20, overall, the ranking has very little real impact on things. I also have books that are ranked in the , to , range, and they can jump up or down 30, places in a day. But that is really meaningless. It is fun, though, I will admit.
I have screen shots of various high water marks. And as a numbers guy, I appreciate the more detailed explanation. But my point is that too many people obsess over the rankings even when there are no practical impacts of said ranking. At the deeper rankings, placement is extremely volatile, so sales rank becomes less meaningful and less reliable the further out you go.
Ranking at 28, may not be much better for visibility than ranking at 1,, But understanding how the system works gives you an edge when trying to crack those elusive higher ranks. This is perfect timing! Thank you for letting us in on this.
Amazon Sales Rank: Taming the Algorithm
Marisha Pink shares her experience here: And Andy Lowe follows up with step-by-step instructions for various retailers: Thanks for posting this. That clever bit of reverse engineering gave me some guidelines for releasing a book within the next few months. Steady as she goes. I always did amazon preorders and had good, though short, visibility. My past release i opted not to do amazon preorders. It was a bust. Excellent article and very clarifying in one of the aspects that most indie writers fail to understand.
As a spanish indie in a market not yet mature as the english-speaking is , this post is a must. Can I translate it to spanish to spread this knowledge among the spanish-speaking indies? That would be wonderful, Miguel, and greatly appreciated! Please feel free, but include a link back to the original article.
I just published a book in Spanish and am considering a second. However, Amazon recently emailed me asking if I would be interested in having the unit considered for a promo along with other Spanish language editions. Consideration does NOT mean selected. Article translated and published, John! Here goes the link: Regarding the spanish indie market, I agree that there is enormous potential for growth. At the moment, Amazon is the main actor, but I hope Ibooks and Play Books will grow in time to become a viable option. Thanks a lot for this wonderful article and your kind permission to publish it in spanish, John.
I can certainly confirm that a download spike from a promo decays very fast! I suspect that the most successful indies keep an eye on all aspects of their sales, and know how to manage promos to steer their books toward greater visibility. The effect of 10, sales can vanish within two weeks! Hitting the top of the charts in a category is an advantage and a huge ego boost , but not a long-term solution. I find permafree to be a hit-or-miss strategy, though.
Discoverability remains one of our greatest challenges as indie authors. Thank you for a brief, clear explanation of the Amazon algorithms. I can now of the first time understand how it works. Hi Heather, Giveaways are counted immediately as the customer downloads them. Rankings are updated hourly.
Free titles are tracked on a separate sales ranking, however. John, thanks for writing this post. I know that when I look at a book on Amazon, I always check out the reviews. So indirectly I guess reviews can drive sales, which drives ranking. What do you think? None of these factors exists in a vacuum, though, and like KDP enrollment, they can offer an indirect advantage to visibility and sales. Good to know, but no desire to obsess. I just keep writing and building a slow-and-steady base of readers. Some reviews appear, only to disappear within hours or days. Nobody seems to have any solid information about it.
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