Amazon Sales Rankings of importance to self-published authors, well, any author really. This mysterious number indicates where a particular book title ranks in sales among all Amazon titles for sale at that given hour. The information provided must mean something to the employees and programmers at Amazon, but to the average person checking sales rank, the number means very little.
Why is there so much interest in Amazon Sales Rankings? First of all, the higher the sales ranking, the higher the book comes up in Amazon's search results, making a high sales ranking desirable. Why? The higher a book appears in the search results, the more likely it will be purchased.
Is there any other information to be gleaned from an Amazon Sales Ranking? What about actual sales totals? Alas, this information is hard to determine accurately from Amazon's Sales Ranking. Morris Rosenthal, the acknowledged expert on Amazon Sales Rankings, provides a chart which can be used to estimate sales based on sales rankings. You can subscribe to a service like RankTracer who has done the math and written software to translate the mysterious sales rankings into reasonably accurate sales figures.
If you publish through Lightning Source, which I do not, I am not sure how you check your sales totals (anyone who publishes with Lightning Source it would be great if you would comment on how to check sales totals using this company).
With CreateSpace, you can log in on your Member Dashboard and every hour your sales totals are updated. By viewing the details for that month's sales the day the book was sold can be seen, where the sale took place - Amazon or via Expanded Distribution, and the share of the sale you, the author or publisher, will receive.
This is so much easier than trying to estimate sales based on a nebulous sales ranking. Amazon Sales Rankings are still important, but not in determining sales numbers.
I'm publishing through CreateSpace. The book is launching in a couple of weeks and I need to know if sales through CreateSpace are part of the sales rank on Amazon, or only sales made directly on the Amazon site. Its important because sales through the CreateSpace eStore earn significantly more money. But if they don't hit the sales rank on Amazon, long term it might be better to take the lower royalty and gain sales rank. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteDebbie,
ReplyDeleteI have no idea where the CreateSpace eStore books are even purchased. I have never sold a copy that way nor have I ever looked to purchase a copy of a book that way.
My guess, and it is just a guess, is that books purchased through the CreateSpace eStore would not show up as part of the data used to calculate Sales Rank.
A quick phone call to the CreateSpace sale force using their "Call Me" feature might get you an answer.
I deliberately steer every sale to Amazon that I can, strictly to work on that all important sales ranking.
Personally, I think the CreateSpace eStore is sort of a gimmick to lure authors in. I searched for it once and could not find it.
I never intended to steer any customers to it so I simply never researched it any further.
If you can get an answer out of CreateSpace please share it here. I am sure you are not the only author who would like an answer to that question.
Hello Again:
ReplyDeleteI called Amazon Author Central and they said that CreateSpace eStore sales do NOT count towards sales rank in Amazon. For that reason, when I did the launch, I sent everyone to my Amazon Author page or the book's sales page on Amazon. It hit #2 in my category and remains on the bestseller list even now - 2 weeks after the launch - without me doing any additional promotion.
Hope folks find that helpful,
Takara