Is Amazon removing rank if a book doesnt's sell for a period?

[TimothyEllis]

Been chatting with an author on Quora, whose book has no rank, and yet before it stopped selling, it did have rank. It's gone a full year without a sale.

Is this normal for Amazon?

If so, do they have a cap on how many books get a rank at any one time?

[Bill Hiatt]

I think the issue came up, but I don't remember in which thread.

It may be that Amazon has a cap or that it decided to stop ranking books that haven't sold in a while. I'm more inclined to the latter theory, based on my (very limited) data. My books that haven't sold in a while do get rank back, even after only one sale. If there were a hard cap on the numbers, given the growing number of titles, it would probably take more than one sale to push the book back to a rank.

Of course, only Amazon knows for sure.

[alhawke]

Been chatting with an author on Quora, whose book has no rank, and yet before it stopped selling, it did have rank. It's gone a full year without a sale.
Is this normal for Amazon? If so, do they have a cap on how many books get a rank at any one time?

I've seen it with some books. After they languish with only one or two sales over two years, it disappears until the next sale. Then the algos do that weird thing where one sale drives it up to 100k. Maybe Amazon figures its better than posting 11mill? (that's where some of my hardcovers are hovering around).
edit for clarity}

[TimothyEllis]

11mill?

I've seen ranks in the 15 mills, for both sales and free.

[Bill Hiatt]

The continued existence of really low ranks might suggest that the feature isn't completely rolled out, or it might suggest that whatever time requirement (no sales for X number of months, or whatever it is) affects different genres differently. In other words, a genre with more a lot more active titles available might cause a non-selling book to drop much lower before it hits the time at which it loses its rank.

That would also suggest that time is the only consideration, that Amazon is not in fact restricting ranking to a fixed number of titles. 

[writeway]

I've never seen this happen. Usually, if you don't have a ranking it means you've sold nothing. You can sell just one book in your lifetime on Amazon and you'll have a rank. They go up way into the high millions. I have some wide books that haven't sold on Amazon in YEARS and they still got rankings. One is just in the 3 millions which is surprising since it's probably not sold on Amazon in 3-4 years. These are old books and I concentrate mainly on my KU books now. But, maybe his book was so poorly ranked that the ranking only goes up so far until you get unranked again. I'm just guessing but maybe that's it. Ranking not only has to do with HIS book but the other books in his cat. The books I got that haven't sold in a while used to sell well but I stopped pushing them, etc. But maybe his book wasn't selling well anyway and so maybe his ranking got so bad it automatically lost its ranking. I don't know how high the ranking can actually go but not surprised if it only goes to a certain point. For example, I'd say it probably makes no sense to keep ranking a book if it's in the 10 millions or something for example.

[TimothyEllis]

I've never seen this happen. Usually, if you don't have a ranking it means you've sold nothing. You can sell just one book in your lifetime on Amazon and you'll have a rank. They go up way into the high millions. Maybe his book was so poorly ranked that the ranking only goes up so far until you get unranked again. I'm just guessing but maybe that's it. Ranking not only has to do with HIS book but the other books in his cat. If they are selling and he hasn't sold in a year then who knows?

The book in question has 5 reviews on it, and 4 of them the author didn't know the people who did them.

That implies sales, and rank. At some point.

[writeway]

I've never seen this happen. Usually, if you don't have a ranking it means you've sold nothing. You can sell just one book in your lifetime on Amazon and you'll have a rank. They go up way into the high millions. Maybe his book was so poorly ranked that the ranking only goes up so far until you get unranked again. I'm just guessing but maybe that's it. Ranking not only has to do with HIS book but the other books in his cat. If they are selling and he hasn't sold in a year then who knows?

The book in question has 5 reviews on it, and 4 of them the author didn't know the people who did them.

That implies sales, and rank. At some point.

I'm not disputing what he claims. I am just saying I have never seen books (outside of new ones) without a ranking. He needs to ask Amazon what's going on. How would people on Quora or on any forum know why something is going on with Amazon. People always jump to ask quesions about companies online when it's best to go to the source then he might can find out what's going on. Without doing that, people are just guessing. Also, if the book hasn't sold in a year I wouldn't be worried about a rank. What difference does it make at that point? I doubt he'd be on any Top 100 lists or anything if that's what he is concerned for.

[TimothyEllis]

I'm not disputing what he claims. I am just saying I have never seen books (outside of new ones) without a ranking.

Err, what?

My estimate is there are something like 20 million books on Amazon without a rank. IN addition to the 15 mill paid, and 15 mill free with ranks. There was a Quora thread where the math was done.

Any book which never sold won't have one. And that goes back to Amazon beginning, so some books only released on Amazon never got ranks. A lot of older books released without a following or launch never got one.

My point is if the book had a rank when released, why doesn't it have a rank now, even if it's in the 15 million range?

He's not concerned about anything.

I was the one who asked how a book with 5 reviews had no rank. He told me it used to. That's the be all and end all of it. I'm the one asking the question about Amazon removing ranks.

[Bill Hiatt]

I have one book with no ranking currently. It hasn't sold in a long time. On the other hand, I have another book I'm pretty sure hasn't sold in the same amount of time, maybe even longer. But it ranks at 3.8 million or so. Both books are short, the first being a short story connected to my main series, the other being a brief nonfiction (advice to parents on parent-teacher communications, so yeah, a real page turner!)

I suddenly realized I could use the reports page to check.

The book without a rank sold 56 in 2015, 43 in 2016, 25 in 2017, 3 in 2018, 5 in 2019, 1 in 2020--total, 133. (There was a time when people would buy a short story for $0.99. But in an era when people put box sets on sale for $0.99, a short story at the same price doesn't look like a good deal. That's why I stopped publishing short stories separately, except as reader magnets.)

The book with a rank sold 49 in 2014 and 31 in 2015, 8 in 2016, 1 in 2017, and aha, 2 in 2021--total, 91.

From this extremely limited data set, it looks as if books that sold in 2021 should have ranks, but books that haven't sold since 2020 don't. Is that what other people are finding? How recent the last sale is seems to carry more weight than the total number of sales.