Thursday, May 19, 2005

Amazon Rankings...

Anyone who has a published book will know that Amazon rankings are addictive. Whether or not your ranking is in the millions (as FWB is right now, but hell, it's not even published yet); in the hundreds of thousands (The Ways...ouch), or under ten thousand (The Divine Nine...yeah!), you still check everyday. The Amazon algorithm is a thing of mystery, yet you can figure out that it combines the daily, monthly, sales with the length of the sales, to come up with a number. Get a bunch of sales on one day, and see your number get closer to one. Don't keep getting those sales, see your number go back higher. So on, and so forth.

I remember when my first book was published, my Amazon ranking kept getting closer and closer to one, and I got more and more excited. Finally, it dipped to 680, and I contacted my editor (like a newbie I was). I was like, 'I should be on Oprah'. She was non-plussed and told me to let her know when the number reached #20. That's when she'd get excited. I ain't got to #20 yet. But I'm still trying!

1 comment:

Frederick Smith said...

aah. the amazon fix... and the google hit.

two things every author needs on a daily basis... along with checking e-mail a billion times a day for news from nyc. lol.
fs