Tag Archives: salesrank

KDP Select Borrowed Books Effect Sales Rank

I get a lot of questions regarding what effects sales rank (now also known as best sellers ranking). I’ve done some testing on the matter to clear up some common sales rank myths, but I didn’t yet have an answer regarding the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program.

What is the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library?
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a kindle can borrow once a month, with no due dates.

Today I can confirm that books borrowed through this program do effect sales rank just like a normal purchase. Oh, you want proof? Here you go:
KDP borrowed informationborrowed book sales rank

I don’t understand, why?

Simply put, a borrowed book gets a portion of the monetary pool, and since it generates revenue for the individual or organization who published the item through KDP, it is considered a sale for the purposes for adjusting sales rank positively. Remember, sales rank is a measure of sales activity of all sorts, so consider this information when you are exploring royalty info (KDP Select payments may be dramatically higher or lower than your sales price).

Why Does NovelRank Underestimate Sales for Popular Books?

Every once in a while, I get an email from an author with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) access who wonders why their numbers are different between NovelRank and KDP. First and foremost, let me say that if you have KDP access for your titles, that is the most accurate source of sales data. Secondly, remember that NovelRank estimates sales based off of sales rank, which is also a data point provided by Amazon, a priority system for ranking books based upon their sales. This makes any estimates vulnerable to many variables, and I wanted to provide some additional info for folks.

One final note before I start listing things: I created NovelRank as a resource that allows authors to spend less time reloading webpages, spend more time writing, and get a feel for the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by seeing hourly and daily fluctuations. It’s hard to communicate this throughout the website, and a few folks have taken to disliking NovelRank strictly based on sales estimates. It hurts a little, but I try and focus on those who are benefiting from the service.

Causes for Underestimation:

  • The better the sales rank, the less variation. Since sales estimates are based upon changes in sales rank, this reduced variation is the first source of underestimation.
  • Furthermore, when sales rank is really good (low number), improving estimates usually means adding arbitrary +X amounts to sales estimates. I try and avoid this as it amounts to guessing.
  • The algorithm uses the last 1000 data points to not only identify sales, but also try and throw out false positives (when sales rank changes a small amount not due to sales but due to Amazon adjusting the ‘list’ of books being ranked in that category). This is typically a boon, but in some cases this can miss genuine sales.
  • If Amazon fails to update sales rank for that hour (common occurrence), that data is ‘lost’, because if a sale occurs during that time, by the time a new sales rank is presented, there is less differentiation.
  • Multiple sales on an individual order are represented as 1 sale by sales rank. See this post about Sales Rank Myths for more info.
  • Finally, sales rank is an ever changing secret formula which NovelRank’s algorithm is constantly trying to learn from. It will never be perfect, but I always hope it can keep up.

I hope this clarifies things for new authors. NovelRank exists so you can do more writing, selling, and living, so enjoy!

Amazon.it (Italy) Sales Rank Tracking Now Available

As of earlier this week, Amazon released the Product Advertising API for Amazon.it, Italy. Within a few hours, NovelRank was enabled for tracking sales rank on Amazon.it. If you want to add your book for tracking, just repeat the process you used when first adding your book: Copy and paste the Amazon link (can be from any Amazon domain, doesn’t have to be the Amazon.it link) into the Sales Rank tracking page. Make sure you check ‘Add Additional Domains’, and click the track button to finish the process. Within a few seconds, all of Amazon’s domains will be checked to see if updates for tracking are available. Enjoy!

Sales Rank Check Frequency Changes – Growing Pains

Starting today, a new structure has been put in place to ensure the longevity and speed of NovelRank continuing through year two and beyond. This is based on the frequency that NovelRank will check the sales rank for a particular book on a particular domain (.com, .de, .co.uk, etc.). I thought long and hard about this, especially as an author who sells from 1 to 10 books a month in some cases, and I think this will be valuable and fair to everyone.

Here is the breakdown:

  • If a book has been sold in the last 7 days on a specific domain, it will continue to have its salesrank checked hourly.
  • If a book has been sold in the last 14 days (but not the last 7), the checks will occur every 4 hours.
  • If a book has been sold in the last month (but not the last 14 days) on a specific domain, the checks will occur every 8 hours.
  • If a book has not been sold in the last month on a specific domain, the check will occur once per day.

It’s important to note that as soon as a sale is made, the clock is reset and the book goes back to hourly salesrank checks! It is also domain specific, so in the case of some books (see my PHP book for example), it will check .com hourly, but .fr and .ca would be daily, thus it will vary between domains even within the same book, as many books are popular only in specific regions.

But WHY?

Two big reasons:

  • Less frequent checks allow the system overall to be faster at loading pages and data (more improvements coming soon on this)
  • More capacity for NovelRank to support tracking a larger number of books and benefiting more authors going forward. Amazon has limits on the amount of data you can request per second, so there is a raw limit to what NovelRank can provide due to these restrictions by Amazon.

I want NovelRank to always be useful, fast, and benefit as many authors as possible, and this is just the first step in continuing to uphold these goals. This slow down for books that are not actively selling but actively being tracked will be gradual and be in full effect by April 6, 2011.

What about new books?

When a book is first added to NovelRank for salesrank tracking, its last sale date is set to the day the book was added, so it will immediately be treated to hourly sales rank checks for at least the next 7 days (more if it continues to sell books!).

Final Word

When I use the term books here, I am referring to any paperback, comic, hardcover, kindle, etc. format that is tracked on NovelRank. For simplicity I just refer to everything allowed on NovelRank for tracking as books. The FAQ has also been updated to reflect this change. Photo courtesy of digitalmums.