{edit: also,  the response they gave you is the same they've given me when I've called. I don't see customer service helping with this.

This from Amazon help.

Someone has no idea how their own system works.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I hope you are having a lovely day.

My name is Tamara, I am the Senior Support Agent that will be assisting you today.

I can empathize with the position you are in and I will gladly do my best to assist you!

After further research I can it can be confirmed that the ranking for your book(s) is correct. There are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria.

Keep in mind that Sales Rank fluctuates every hour in line with customer demand and in relation to the demand for other books, both of which may vary based on factors such as popularity of new releases, seasonality, etc. While monitoring your book?s Amazon sales rank may be helpful in gaining general insight into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and other initiatives to drive book sales, it is not an accurate way to track your book?s sales or compare your sales in relation to books in other categories, since a particular item?s sales rank does not absolutely reflect its sales.

I understand that you are concerned about your sales rank, so I have requested that our technical team look into this just to verify that there is no issue that I have missed.

You can expect a response within the next 24 hours.

Have a great day further.


Thanks for using Amazon KDP,

Tamara
Kindle Direct Publishing
http://kdp.amazon.com

I have never seen a book remain the same rank for 24 hours without there being a major problem.

Plus I checked the category ranks, and they're not even close to what's displaying.

 

Sales seem to lag by about a day on Zon lately over the past couple months, but I've found ranking was picked up internationally almost immediately in the UK and Australia. US and Canada tends to be the worst.

It seems all hit or miss these days with Amazon. And frustrating 

Hope ranking moves for you soon in Australia.

Received this from Amazon today.

Hello,

We?re excited to share that Amazon will test allowing customers to read a sample of your eBook pre-order starting the week of April 14. This feature will work exactly like the ?Read Sample? feature that displays for books on Amazon today. It?ll show a preview, up to 10% from your current manuscript?s content to engage potential readers.

If you?ve already submitted your manuscript, Amazon will automatically generate the reading sample. If no manuscript is currently uploaded, then no reading sample will be shown.

I'm hoping this will be a good thing.

Having just released a book 1 in a new series with a new main character, the Pre-Orders were well down.

With luck, having a pre-order sample there for that last week might just encourage more pre-orders at the last minute, because people get hooked on the actual beginning of the story, instead of just trying to gauge by the blurb and cover.

I'm hoping, anyway.

I have seen the same thing as hungryboson. New books show up in the Kindle PC app, looking no different than they ever did. It appears Amazon was only interested in stopping transfer via USB cable.

Presumably, I would lose access to the content if I closed my Amazon account--but for some reason, I always thought that was the case. It probably shouldn't have been, but I know the apps and devices check back in with your account, particularly after an update.

Similarly, I always thought that my heirs wouldn't be able to inherit my kindle content. In fact, there was quite a bit of discussion on that point years ago, long before Amazon made the current change. Whether we call the books purchased or licensed, they were always tied to a particular account, at least when used on Amazon devices.

The same is probably true to an extent of some other vendors. When Barnes and Noble end Nook service in the UK, someone else bought it and honored the book purchases but didn't support other Nook content (like games), so people who had bought any non-book content were just out of luck.

For that reason, it's probably always better to buy physical books, but I just don't have the room anymore. And ebooks are easier to use for research purposes, anyway.