Voyage into the Amazon Sales Rank
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
The allure of the Amazon.com sales rank is well known to many an author, as is the bewilderment it often brings. How convenient—a number that tells you in hard, empirical terms how your book is doing! But alas, the Amazon sales rank is a fickle mistress. After noticing wild fluctuations in their placement, authors and publishers often fall prey to obsessive rank-checking, waking up at night in cold sweats to boot up the computer and surf to Amazon.com, spending endless hours staring bleary-eyed at the monitor: Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh.
Yet for all this scrutiny, the Amazon sales rank remains cloaked in mystery. continue reading
