Amazon Rankings And Authors

I thought this would be a good topic for this week. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can go to Amazon and look at any book (one of mine is a really good choice, lol). Scroll down to the Product Details and in that area, you will see the product ranking. 

 

There are, for books, usually four rankings. Best Sellers Rank followed by three category rankings. What do these numbers mean?

 

They show you how well any item on Amazon is selling. If you want to make money selling on Amazon and you are in Kindle Unlimited in particular, you really need those numbers to be very low. Ideally in the top 1,000 of the entire store. The real money is in the top 100. 

 

Here's the catch, though. You can manipulate those numbers. How? Facebook Ads. 

 

Amazon loves for us sellers (this isn't only authors) to do their marketing for them. Why wouldn't they? It's literally free money for them. We spend money on Facebook Ads or other ads such as Bookbub or TikTok. People click on the ad; they go to Amazon. Maybe they buy my book, maybe they buy another one, or something else. 

 

I can tell you from experience that to get a good ranking now, even with a new book launch, takes money. The more the better. I mentioned in a prior newsletter that Orc's Forbidden Claim wasn't ranking as well as I'd like. That's because I cannot afford to spend a lot on ads right now. 

 

When I announce a new book to you, on my social media, get some swaps with my author friends, I can get a new book into the top 3k of Amazon. If I want to get into top 1k I need to spend a few thousand dollars on Facebook. In order to get into the top 100, it is currently at least ten thousand dollars or more in Facebook ads. It depends on who else is launching and how much they are spending. 

 

But here's the rub, especially with Kindle Unlimited, you don't know if you're going to make a return on that spend! If the KU rate drops, I can lose all that money and make nothing. Even if it stays in the average range there is no assurance I'll be profitable on my ad spend. 

 

I used to spend five to ten thousand on a launch plus two to four thousand a month on pushing Dragon's Baby. James did all the math on some fancy spreadsheet and figured out that we weren't making money. We were, overall, losing money almost every month. Lots of books sold, but to what end? 

 

If you're not in KU, it's easier. You don't have to wait until the 15th of the following month to find out if you made or lost money. It's right there for you in black and white. 

 

It wasn't this way when James and I started. We never did ads for the first few years then when we did, they were easy to do and to be profitable. 

 

This is another way that Amazon has Indie authors on a wheel. You don't advertise on Facebook and elsewhere, you don't rank well. You don't rank well; you don't get paid as well. 

 

It is different if your books are “wide”, i.e., not in Kindle Unlimited. Every book actually sells so I make about 3x more money per book than I do on a Kindle Unlimited full book read for one. Also, I am selling to a bigger audience with the other platforms and my new webstore too. That makes it easier on all fronts to know if you're profitable, if your ads are working, and all the good things you need to survive as a small business.

 

That's my broad overview of Amazon Sales Ranking for your weekly insight to the author world. I hope it was interesting for you. Here's my poll for your easy response this week.