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Awesome Resources for Creative Writing: Amazon Sales Rank Explained

Awesome Resources for Creative Writing: Amazon Sales Rank Explained

On today's "Awesome Resources for Creative Writing" post, I want to share with you a gold nugget I found: an article that explains Amazon's Sales Rank. If you're anything like me, you may regularly check your book/s to see its sales rank. You may have no idea what it means when you see numbers like this: #1 Ranking But thankfully, someone takes the time to explain all about Sales Rank and what those (potentially confusing) numbers mean. An article on the site "Self Publishing Advice" gives you a detailed look at the Sales Rank and what it means. (By the way, the site itself is packed with awesome advice for writers and writing. It's definitely worth checking out!) The article, titled "Amazon Sales Rank: Taming the Algorithm" explains the secret behind the algorithm that controls Amazon's Sales Rank. Taken from the article: 1. Each sale or download of a product counts as one point toward a hypothetical “rank score”. 2. Each day, the preceding day’s score decreases by half, and is added to today’s points. 3. For each category on Amazon, books are ranked based on their current scores. Example: Monday, a book sells 32 copies. That’s 32 points towards its ranking. Tuesday, the book sells 36 copies. Those 36 points are added to half of Monday’s total (32 / 2 = 16 points), for a total of 52 points. Wednesday, the book sells 16 copies. Those 16 points are added to half of Tuesday’s total (52 / 2 = 26 points), for a total of 42 points. Of course, there's a lot more to know, such as: More recent sales = higher sales rank Sales rank rises or falls as other books sell more or less Higher sales rank doesn't necessarily mean better search result placement and so on… The article basically de-mystifies Amazon's Sales Rank, making it easy for you to understand exactly how well your book is performing. For those who want to understand the Sales Rank a bit better, it's definitely worth checking out! Bonus: Amazon Sales Rank Calculator is a tool provided by Kindlepreneur that will tell you exactly how many books have been sold to earn you your current sales rank.