Wonky Ranks

[idontknowyet]

This is going on around fb thought i would share it.

https://www.creativindie.com/amazon-just-went-to-war-with-indie-authors-kindle-rank-manipulation/?fbclid=IwAR2G7CbST4AlqzS5w4eHTZQpCoIJ1Xnt0i71uvM42IH-mLEFYQGwcCBQJV0

I have a promo going on right now so i'm definitely seeing some wonky ranks happening.
Yesterday my promo started i woke up to a 1k free rank. As i gave away hundreds of free books my rank dropped to 3k. Today after thousands and thousands of books given away im at a low 200 rank. Should be in the double digit range somewhere between 20-80.

[TimothyEllis]

That's a bit clickbait as to what the article actually says.

Ranks are always subject to too many factors to predict. Just a major player in your genre releasing will affect the rank of your book released a couple of days later.

Bookbub does still boost ranks more than anything else does, and this could be Amazon once again trying to step on Bookbub.

There is nothing more annoying for an author to have #1 denied to them because successive Bookbubs hog the top spot over the critical first couple of days of your release. It could well be Amazon has had a lot of feedback on that and decided to act.

[idontknowyet]

There's alot of conversation about rank issues for new releases as well.

[alhawke]

I've seen slow movement with ranking on Amazon. My hunch, like Derek Murphy in the article, is that it's to check rank manipulation ??? Perhaps it can hurt you and stop you from climbing the ranks if you have a big spike with promotions for only one day--like a BookBub promo only.

[Rick Charles]

You are not alone in seeing delayed and degraded Amazon Sales Ranking recently - see:
https://www.kboards.com/threads/anyone-having-a-problem-with-amazon-sale-ranking-iits-acting-strangely-since-about-january-18th-2022.335728/

[alhawke]

Ranks are still definitely slowed--at least for my books. One sale still hasn't even affected rank. Another took two days. In the past it would be a couple hours after a sale. Not sure if there is a glitch or if it's some kind of new algorithm. Whatever the case, it's concerning for an upcoming promotion I have planned.

One thing I never could get, as an aside, is why a book that sells daily has a rank less than a book that hasn't sold in a month. I see this all the time. In the past, this favored new releases and big spike sales, I suppose. Now things are changing ??

[RPatton]

Amazon has historically favored recent releases. The other stores don't. The recency bias has been easy to exploit to a point where it makes it almost too easy to manipulate ranks in order to get the boost you need/want to get the visibility necessary. Honestly, the idea that recency may no longer plays as significant role as it used to is a good thing for most authors. The author who sells a book regularly is going to finally see a reward.

The only people this is going to really hurt by this change, if it is indeed a change, are those who have made rapid release the main part of their business plan and ignored the other facets.

[alhawke]

Well, it's looking like 36 to 48hrs for ranks to change for my books on Amazon this week.

Yesterday my promo started i woke up to a 1k free rank. As i gave away hundreds of free books my rank dropped to 3k. Today after thousands and thousands of books given away im at a low 200 rank. Should be in the double digit range somewhere between 20-80.

Did your ranking finally shift from your promotion? I hope it did for you.

[idontknowyet]

Yeah it took close to 48 hours. I expect to stay up there until my free promo ends.

[j tanner]

I just ended a free promo and my peak rank was about 8 hours after my peak downloads in my dashboard. Seems normal, at least no different from the promo I ran in December...

[j tanner]

One thing I never could get, as an aside, is why a book that sells daily has a rank less than a book that hasn't sold in a month. I see this all the time. In the past, this favored new releases and big spike sales, I suppose. Now things are changing ??

Every historical sale counts for a little bit. If you sold a lot of it in the past, that builds up a rank floor over time that it's almost impossible to drop below.

[alhawke]

Every historical sale counts for a little bit. If you sold a lot of it in the past, that builds up a rank floor over time that it's almost impossible to drop below.

That's the effect of the total. I see that. More successful books hover at higher ranking even with a slump. This is one reason to sell a lot in the front end with our launches.

But what I was referring to is ranking from daily sales. For one of my books, my ranking floats around 300k after each daily sale in the US Amazon market. However other books that I haven't been selling for a while will get a boost up to 150k after a month of no sales. That's weird. Maybe it's due to a delay in reporting rank again for my first example? Slower reporting means lower ranking per sale (the point of this thread). But could the algorithms be trying to help a less successful book?

Another point from a similar vein. I get emails from Amazon about my own books if I'm running a search sometimes. The interesting thing about this is the AI prefers advertising my worst selling books. Could be my imagination, but I don't it is. Anyway, I've been wondering about this ranking stuff for a while. Only benefit of discussing it, I suppose, is figuring something out to tweak advertising and timing of sales.

[j tanner]

But what I was referring to is ranking from daily sales. For one of my books, my ranking floats around 300k after each daily sale in the US Amazon market. However other books that I haven't been selling for a while will get a boost up to 150k after a month of no sales. That's weird. Maybe it's due to a delay in reporting rank again for my first example? Slower reporting means lower ranking per sale (the point of this thread). But could the algorithms be trying to help a less successful book?

Understand what you mean now. And no theory. I checked my occasional sellers, short stories and stuff, and don't see what you're seeing. They're typically mid-200K on each spike. There will be a lot of books at that one sale level for the day so the order they get put in is going to make a pretty big difference. But is it just historical decay or something else going on...? Anyone's guess.

[alhawke]

  I just always wondered about it.

[idontknowyet]

Still wonky ranks. Yesterday and for the last 3 days, my book stayed at 23 free in the store. Today my book started out at 37k in the store. With over 20 books sold plus who knows how many downloads, I'm at 27k. That is nowhere near the rank it should be. Let's see if I jump up tomorrow.