So, knowing that the real meaning of the rank is vague, I plotted out four of the more authoritative estimates of the relation between Amazon rank and book sales per week. The graph below shows these with rank on the x axis and sales per week on the y (note the scale is not linear). A rank of 50,000 is shown by the dotted line and the bottom value on the y-axis is one sale per week.
To cut a long story short, a sales rank of 50,000 suggests one may have sold a book that week.
[/excitement]
4 comments:
Actually, an Amazon sales rank is even more useless than that. It's fun to watch the numbers rise and fall, but ultimately, they're meaningless alogrithms.
I find the numbers fairly useful - I know that some people slag them off and yes, they can fluctuate simply because others around you have sold none - but as I know how many books have sold on the previous quarter (via the publisher) and know what that equates too in Amazon sales, then I can pretty much guestimate how the book is doing in this quarter too.
The highest I got so far is about 7,500 - according to Titlez - which made me over excited until I realised JUST how many books were stacked up on top of me!!
My experience of watching my Amazon US numbers is that if it sells about one a week, it'll spike at around 50,000 when it sells, and then slowly drift down again until another copy sells. If it sells another copy within a day or two, it'll spike to 35,000 (IIRC) and drift down again. Because The Syndicate was selling fairly steadily at around a copy a week for a long time, I collected a bit of data on how fast it drifted down. Yes, I am a sad geek.
lol, I tried to figure Amazon's rankings out and failed. I ended up just calling the Ingrams automated sales number instead. I stalked that line for the first couple weeks after my book came out.
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