It’s time to put myths, legends, and mysteries to rest. Sales rank has been elusive for too long, so thanks to the support of NovelRank donations, I’ve conducted a series of tests to answer some long standing questions about this elusive beast we call, Amazon’s Sales Rank!

MYTH: Sales rank improves when a review is added.

Reality: False. Testing reviews, verified purchases as well as unverified reviews had no effect on a book’s sales rank. This is false for anything except actual sales which do effect sales rank.

MYTH: Sales Rank automatically returns to original value when a kindle book is returned.

Reality: False. This was tested by purchasing a Kindle book at 5:47am. at 8am, Amazon reflected the new sales rank. At 8:30am, customer support was contacted and the e-book was returned. Sales rank deteriorated normally and did not reset back to the original pre-sale value.

MYTH: Book purchases effect sales rank immediately.

Reality: False. There is a 3 hour delay between when a purchase is completed and when the sales rank is reflected by Amazon. This ensures that the order will not be canceled (they are fast). This is true for both Kindle and print purchases.

MYTH: Purchases that are affiliate driven (Amazon pays a percentage of the price to the affiliate referrer) do not effect sales rank.

Reality: False. There is no difference to Amazon between an affiliate sales and a sale driven by Amazon.com direct searches. To them, a sale is a sale is a sale is a… you get the idea.

The above image began with “fairy tale map” by angelic0devil6, Creative Commons: Attribution license.

MYTH: Purchasing multiple copies on a single order does not improve sales rank like purchases made on two separate orders.

Reality: True! To perform this test, I purchased three different books within a single order. One was a control (single copy), one had two copies purchased in a single order, and the last had a single copy purchased. After submitting that order, using the same Amazon account, 10 minutes later I purchased a second copy of the 3rd book (which had a single copy purchased in the first order). The results? After 3 hours, all 3 books moved from a rank of 1,020,000 (+/- 14,000) to a rank of 123,500 (+/- 500). After 1 additional hour, the 3rd book moved to a rank of 64,000, reflecting the second purchase order!

MYTH: A canceled order will cancel the sales rank effect.

Reality: True. Purchasing a copy of a print book and then canceling the order 20 minutes later (while still allowed by Amazon) will not trigger a change in sales rank.

Final Thoughts

I hope everyone enjoyed this insight. If you have any myths you’ve always wanted busted, put them in the comments below. This is one of those tests I wanted to do for a long time, so I’m glad to finally get this information into the hands of authors. Basically, increase sales, and if possible, have them all happen at the same time using separate orders on Amazon to ensure the largest effect on sales rank! Make sure to use the links below to share this post with your fans and fellow authors.

Finally, thanks for using NovelRank and thank you to the supporters whose donations made this possible!

The day has finally arrived and your book has a sales rank on Amazon. Great! Now what? Sure, maybe you start by tracking the book across Amazon, but what does it all mean? What if your book is on Amazon.com but doesn’t have a sales rank? Here are some basic concepts to help you understand more about what a book’s sales rank really means.

Your book is on Amazon but does not have a sales rank listed.

Amazon has decided that your book may generate sales eventually on that particular domain and has permission from the publisher to sell the book globally. However, if the sales rank is not present, it means that nobody has ever purchased a copy of that book. Someone may in the future, but right now your book’s sales rank is not listed.

My book’s sales rank is really high on Amazon.com! In the millions!

Congratulations, someone bought your book, once, a long time ago. For instance, this pre-order only for dummies book has a sales rank of 4+ million! In the last 2 months, it’s lost 300,000 ranks. If your sales rank was 1,000,000 it would lose more ranking a bit faster, but it’s been a while. Now let’s look at one with a bit more history, “Polynesian Interconnections“. In the last 6 months, it has lost 4.4 million positions in sales rank.
It loses ~1 million rankings over 15 days until it starts to level off and slowdown around 3.5 million. Thus, if you haven’t sold a book in a month, it’s likely you will be in the millions for your book’s sales rank.

Let’s pretend you sold one book a day, every day…

Your sales rank would stay pretty darn steady! You would have a sales rank between 50,000 and 150,000 most likely and it would constantly be going up and down. Here is a book that sold 24 copies in October of 2009, “The Production’s Assistants Pocket Handbook“. While it wasn’t 1 copy an hour, you can see the pattern. The takeaway is that in 24 hours, your sales rank will climb back to its pre-book sale sales rank.

Your book has a sales rank of 400 and it holds steady at 400.

You sold 2 books each hour approximately, congrats (I hate you, in a jealous way)! When you are in the top 200, 300, 400, etc. your book’s sales rank should drop about 14% if you didn’t sell a book. If you sell 1 book, it drops 7%. If you held steady, you sold 2 books! Seeing a pattern? This gets much more complicated the better the sales rank (lower number), and less complicated when you are above a sales rank of 1000.

I sold 1 book every hour…

On some estimates, you would be averaging a sales rank of 100. This is according to Nimble Book’s Power Law formula. That data is based on 2006 data. You may also have a sales rank around 300, just like “The Game” by Neil Strauss. It’s tricky, and personally, I’m still tweaking the formulas as more data is being collected.

Your book is in the top 50.

I don’t even want to talk about it. You’re doing fantastic, go out to dinner at a nice restaurant… oh, and donate to help support NovelRank (It’s in the bottom right, below ‘Stay Informed’)!

What about the other domains, like Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de?

Amazon.co.uk is a pretty popular site (so is Amazon.ca), but they have less inventory, so everything is scaled down. Amazon Germany, France, and Japan are even lower in inventory, so it scales down even further.

Final Thoughts on Book Sales Rank

• Staying below 7 digits of sales rank is a good idea
• A book a day keeps the 200,000’s away
• Sales Rank overall is lower in all other domains besides Amazon.com
• It’s even lower and less variable in Germany, France, and Japan
• NovelRank is awesome

Look for some more research in the future!