To give you an idea how out of the loop internet sources are, I found one that claims Amazon has published 1.4 million books through KDP.

 

Someone who obviously never gets off the top 100 lists. And never ever hits anything off an ad slider.

Here's another example of Amazon ads going off the rails:

At the bottom of the first page of a search for my name, I see a section titled, "Books related to your search." It's a sponsored section. Since I primarily write urban fantasy, you'd expect to see urban fantasy books. Or maybe you'd expect to see other things I've bought in the past mixed in. But here's what I say instead.

On the left, we have "Books by people in recovery for people in recovery." I've never bought anything like that.

In the middle, we have "Powerful prayers and scriptures at your fingertips." I have occasionally bought biblical commentary and related historical books, but the advertised titles are neither. They appear to be somewhere on the boundary between religion and occult studies, so the ad text is misleading. That might be the fault of the advertiser, but the placement isn't.

On the right, we have "Dr. [name deleted]. A Jewish-Christian author" One might ask, "Author of what?" but that again could be an advertiser's fault. He turns out to be the author of religious books, though of a very different type than I usually order.

So the middle and the right have some connection, but not to the particular search with which they're displayed. Right beneath them is a fantasy novel advertisement--for a book I already own.

The second page? It has exactly the same ads on the bottom, as if I'm going to say, "Wow, I was totally uninterested in this book on page 1, but it looks so much better on page 2. Page 2 also doubles down on powerful prayers and scriptures at your fingertips. These turn out to be religious self-help books of a kind I've never bought.

Page 3 has the same three ads at the bottom and doubles down on books for people in recovery at the top. Again, I've never bought anything like that, and it has nothing to do with the search.

Page 4 doubles down on a Jewish-Christian author at the top, though it mercifully has nothing at the bottom. By now, the search result has run out of anything by me but does have a book by Dolly Parton, as well as biographies of Queen Elizabeth I and Joe Marti--you know, things we'd immediately associate with urban fantasy.

Page 5 doubles down on prayers and scriptures at the top and returns to the same three ads at the bottom. Is this a waste of screen real estate or what? Meanwhile, the search results include a number of books about musicians and bands. (There's a John Hiatt, who is a musician, so maybe that's the connection?)

What do we learn from this?

First, Amazon shows the same ads. relevant to the immediate search or not, relevant to the customer history or not, over and over. (I'm wishing for a I-never-want-to-see-this-ad-again-as-long-as-I-live button.)

Second, Amazon shows variations of the same ad on the same page.

Third, Amazon's search algorithm, reasonably accurate at the beginning, wanders away from any relationship to the original search past about page 2 and seemingly shows a lot of titles at random. Throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks? Most of the ads embedded in the search results--though not all--are at least in the right genre.

None of this inspires any confidence in the idea that my AMS ads will show in reasonable places.

But at least if I need to be in recovery, I know where to look for books...

 

Quote from: TimothyEllis on October 30, 2023, 11:40:43 AM

The other thought I had, was you may have missed the rank spike itself. Between 2 times you looked, the initial sales spike may have happened, and then been replaced by the the lower sales level a few hours later. Just guessing though.

I'm too compulsive for that. 

If I were to take a conservative estimate, based on other past promos, the total rank should be somewhere between 20-40k in the US store at the moment. It certainly is not "161,263" with all those sales (the current ranking). Actually, more concerning, 161,263 matches closer to 6 sales today. In fact, ranking started moving again just this morning after a 3 day freeze. Did Amazon literally not rank my book at all last week during the main sale? 

Looking at my other titles in series, they're all hovering around 400k right now. This is also too high and I've seen it immobile over the past few days. Internationally, again, ranking was fine in Australia and UK; Canada is still immobile.

It was slow three months ago as well with my BookBub. There ranking was eventually seen and the book ranked at the top 1000; but it would have been in the top 100. Think twice about running a promo right now. Whatever's going on, your book might not be counted in ranking.

Another thought: How important is ranking? I'll guess maybe 10-20% extra sales from the top 3 charts, now lost??--not a lot, but still significant. But it also helps with future algos for your book search.

One word of caution in interpreting today's rankings based on previous experience: we don't know how many books are involved or what other authors are doing. The slowness to update is clearly a real issue. Where the book ends up may not be. I'm just speculating, because as usual, we have no ****ing data, but it's reasonable to assume that more and more books are being published. Depending on how many of those authors have money to spend on AMS ads and other promotional strategies, the competition for those top ranking spots may be fierce.

Amazon has been using that "over one million" language for years. Certainly, there are far more books in KDP by now. We don't know how many authors are making major sales pushes at any given time nor how effective they are. But those numbers could easily be far greater than they have been in the past.

Of course, people also drop out all the time, but the segment of authors heavily investing in advertising is the one that would make a difference for our purposes.

Also worth considering is what's going with the factory method of production--several authors under one penname. There used to be a lot of conversation about that, but I haven't heard much recently. Because such author collectives can release more rapidly than most of us, what's left of algorithmic boosts would be sucked up potentially by those collectives.

The other thought I had, was you may have missed the rank spike itself. Between 2 times you looked, the initial sales spike may have happened, and then been replaced by the the lower sales level a few hours later. Just guessing though.

I'm too compulsive for that. 

If I were to take a conservative estimate, based on other past promos, the total rank should be somewhere between 20-40k in the US store at the moment. It certainly is not "161,263" with all those sales (the current ranking). Actually, more concerning, 161,263 matches closer to 6 sales today. In fact, ranking started moving again just this morning after a 3 day freeze. Did Amazon literally not rank my book at all last week during the main sale? 

Looking at my other titles in series, they're all hovering around 400k right now. This is also too high and I've seen it immobile over the past few days. Internationally, again, ranking was fine in Australia and UK; Canada is still immobile.

It was slow three months ago as well with my BookBub. There ranking was eventually seen and the book ranked at the top 1000; but it would have been in the top 100. Think twice about running a promo right now. Whatever's going on, your book might not be counted in ranking.

Another thought: How important is ranking? I'll guess maybe 10-20% extra sales from the top 3 charts, now lost??--not a lot, but still significant. But it also helps with future algos for your book search.

I ran into a dead end from emailing. They're not meant to deal with ranking, I figure.

I'm not giving up on Amazon either, but I might be focusing on other arenas. If marketing there doesn't work anymore, why keep focusing on promoting with Amazon? The trouble is, at the moment, all promo companies focus on Amazon readers.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether these changes are temporary or permanent.