How Do Amazon's Rankings Work?

Do you ever go to Amazon just to browse books? I've only done it for research purposes ~ looking at book covers in my genre, reading "successful" blurbs, which coincidentally are all attached to trade-published books, so they don't count. I've also scanned the best seller lists to find sub-genres I might be able to apply to my novel. 

I've never browsed for books to actually read. Apparently, people do that, though. They must be the die-hards. "I only like romance, so I'll just pick one that has a pretty cover."

With my track record of no sales to speak of, I'm never going to see any of my books land on the first screen or the seventh screen or the one thousandth screen of Amazon results. And therein lies the indie author's problem. I've actually searched for my books a couple of times and still couldn't find them without tightly narrowing my search by author name and title. That's how buried they are. Back when What We Conceal was known as The Apple, I did a search for it once, and books that didn't even have the word "apple" in their title showed up before mine ever did.

Here are the current rankings for Running From Herself:

Best Sellers Rank: #1,139,870 in Kindle Store 

• #1,103 in Contemporary American Fiction
• #5,613 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
• #8,134 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)

See why it wouldn't show up on the one thousandth screen? I've read Reddit posts in which someone proclaims, "I made it to the best seller's list in my genre!" Oh, what genre do you write in? "Fourteenth century Taiwanese furniture carving!" Cool. So, if snagging a best seller is your game, write something really, really obscure. No competition!

From the looks of my ranking in "books", apparently hardly anyone publishes paperbacks, because I've only sold two copies, and both of them were to me.

Contrary to what seems like the most sensible reason for books to appear on the landing screen on Amazon, it's not solely driven by sales. (I personally think most of it is, though.) Yes, reviews count, too, dammit, as well as using popular keywords; but everyone's landing page is different, because Amazon knows you very, very well ~ too well, actually. It knows what you like to read, it knows what "people like you" like to read. In fact, its algorithm puts you in a box with others who've made similar purchases as you, and not just in books. Thus, people who've also bought a Furminator cat brush, a KitchenAid non-stick baking sheet, and a bottle of vitamin B6 are going to have the exact same tastes in books as me! It's mind-blowing! I want an algorithm for my own personal use, so I'll know who to sell my books to. 

If your book gets a surge in "sales", your ranking will shoot up. I put "sales" in quotes because free downloads definitely count. When my first FreeBooksy ad resulted in something like 1,700 downloads, my book was riding high for a brief moment. My bank account, however, wasn't. 

Kindle Unlimited reads also contribute to a book's ranking. I've never had success with KU, and I'm starting to question whether it's worth it. I could get wide distribution by unenrolling and thus getting on Ingram's database. A rarely noted drawback to KU: if an author checks her "pages read" report and sees that someone read one page, or fifty-eight pages, her already fragile self-esteem will take another hit. I can more easily understand reading one page and deciding the book's not for you than to get far into it and abandoning it. I don't think Kindle Unlimited is all it's cracked up to be.

The hardest part of rankings is that they're fleeting. In order to maintain a high rank, an author really needs to put sweat equity into it. Old sales, even if they're high in number, don't count as much as a newer book that has fewer sales, but a bunch at a time. As an author, think of yourself as a hamster on a wheel. Not only do you need to make sales every day, but you have to make a lot of them. Is all that sweat sustainable? Yes, if you don't mind going insane. 

On that note, Amazon only looks at a rolling 30-day period. Another reason to keep that hamster wheel spinning. My one-day burst of "sales" was fun to see for about a minute, before everything went to hell. 

I suppose the good news is, there are a couple of minor things an author can do that might help. Keywords, keywords, keywords. Stuff that baby (your blurb) with popular keywords. In fact, your entire blurb should just be made up of keywords (kidding!) They have to be popular keywords, naturally, so do your research. Publisher Rocket is the software that all the cool kids use. It'll set you back $199.00, though. I'm not about to pay two hundred dollars to locate six or seven popular keywords. But then again, I'm poor. There are a few free-to-try sites, but I found them to be only minimally helpful. Here is one. I've gone the old-fashioned way of finding keywords: think of one that might be good, type it into the Amazon search bar and see what the auto-complete suggests. Not ideal. I suppose you could also ask AI, but be aware that AI is really stupid. It might vomit out a few keywords you could build on, though.

The other thing an author can do is have a great cover, blah blah blah...you know, the usual. Stuff you're doing already. You could also wish really hard for popularity. I find that doesn't really work. 

So, the good news is, if you're selling and selling consistently, your book ranking will be a source of pride...and money. 

Me? I'm too tired to stay on that wheel.