What the expletive? Books just can't be found on Amazon

[Sonya Bateman]

I was trying to do some market research on Amazon in an attempt to improve my marketing, sales, and whatnot. And this is what I found, when I used the left menu to navigate to Kindle fantasy books. A huge, tangled, steaming mess in the "top 20" results. This is just the number of the first 20 books and each of their corresponding overall ranks in the Kindle store. NONE of these are marked as Sponsored Products -- so if some of them are AMS ads, Amazon has stopped indicating that in the search results.


1. #11
2. #136
3. #18
4. #573
5. #630
6. #2,133
7. #1,523
8. #9,132
9. #2,551
10. #1,144
11. #162
12. #1,397,407
13. #1,280,512
14. #809,162
14. #537,229
16. #1,069,256
17. #234,564
18. #122,677
19. #521,648
20. #486,141


Now, I'm absolutely no good at math ... but d**n it, I can count. This makes zero sense.


To be clear, this is how I arrived at this list of books. From Amazon's main page, I went to the menu button at the top and clicked Kindle eReaders & Books, then Kindle Books, then used the left-hand menu to navigate to the main Fantasy category.


I just did the same thing with Thrillers and got pretty much the same insane, nonsensical results. One of those seriously low-ranking books on the first page of the Fantasy results also appeared on the first page of the Thriller results. Again, if these are Sponsored Product ads, there is NO INDICATION that it's an ad. These books are just there in a list of "top" books, like all the others.


Is Amazon really that much of a pay-to-play market already?


And if you navigate from an individual book page through the subcategories links to the Best Sellers list, Amazon will only show you the top 100 books in that subcategory. There is no way to look at any books that are ranking lower than top 100 in the category.


There is no way to find any books on Amazon that are not already selling like crazy, or that are apparently randomly listed in the genre results from the left-hand menu.


Just wondering if I'm seeing something wrong here, or missing something. I guess I'm confused, because this isn't how I thought Amazon worked.


ETA: As Simon mentioned, the results are different if you view books this way and you're not logged in. If you're not logged in and/or using incognito mode, the list looks normal, in descending order by overall rank. But I thought most people would browse Amazon while logged in... so they'd see this mess instead of the actual numbered list.


ETA2: Post edited to remove whiny, woe-is-me rant about my own disaster of a writing career.

[Simon Haynes]

Hi Sonya,

Just taking a look now, but I may be getting to the list the wrong way.

First, are you browsing the list with an incognito window? This makes all the difference, because Amazon will shuffle the books to show you titles they think you will buy.

Second, I don't want to sound flippant, but I just wanted to say that all backlist is valuable. Some of mine were written almost 20 years ago and still tick along. Do you have a mailing list and a newsletter?

I'm asking, because I quit in 2014, and didn't pick up the reins again until March this year. I had a mailing list with 200 people on who hadn't heard a peep since 2015, plus eight or nine novels with dreadful covers, awful blurbs and rankings in the millions. It's taken me 3-4 months but I'm turning it around, and I am not a big spender on ads. ($5/day back in April, up from $2/day in March. Now it's higher, but I only spent more as the sales increased.)

I do know how tough it can be, and I sympathise. I posted a link to the SF/F newsletter facebook group in a thread today, because it's a great way to get some traction without spending any money.

[Simon Haynes]

I can confirm that the list is completely different when viewed logged-in, or viewed incognito.

The logged-in one has books in the millions (e.g. classic tales of buddhist china, for some weird reason) whereas the other is all bestsellers in roughly ascending order.

[Sonya Bateman]

Thanks, Simon. I am actually browsing Amazon while logged in -- and I see the same weird Buddhist book in the top results. I guess my concern is: don't most people browse Amazon while logged in, so they can buy something? And this is apparently what they'll see. None of the random books or books that don't belong there by rank match any of my personal browsing habits.


I do have a mailing list that's just about 1K people (not huge, but they're all organic signups). I was doing really well in 2016, and while I didn't admittedly change much of what I was doing for 2017 (though I tried to advertise more) I still did worse by half, and this year it's been even worse, with even more advertising than 2018.


But all of my complaining in the original post sounds pathetic (my conclusion, you didn't make me think that :-) so I'm going to go ahead and edit it down and just leave the question about stupid, screwy, impossible Amazon. Thanks for your observations! It's helpful to know what other people are seeing and whether I'm the only one seeing this.

[Bill Hiatt]

I can confirm that the list is completely different when viewed logged-in, or viewed incognito.

The logged-in one has books in the millions (e.g. classic tales of buddhist china, for some weird reason) whereas the other is all bestsellers in roughly ascending order.

That's fascinating. It makes you wonder what in your history or the OP's would make Amazon think you wanted to buy a book ranked in the millions?


Anyway, legally, I think Amazon has to mark any sponsored results. As with so many other things, how their bots do what they do is a complete mystery.

[Simon Haynes]

But all of my complaining in the original post sounds pathetic (my conclusion, you didn't make me think that :-) so I'm going to go ahead and edit it down and just leave the question about stupid, screwy, impossible Amazon. Thanks for your observations! It's helpful to know what other people are seeing and whether I'm the only one seeing this.

Don't worry, it didn't sound pathetic to me. I've been there, more than once.

I know what it's like to be selling next to nothing, and to wish I was selling more.  However, I think it's harder the other way, when you've enjoyed modest success and then you're watching it slip away. I can think of seven or eight occasions over the past 18 years where something along those lines has happened to me, and the one thing I've learned is that I will always bounce back.

I've managed to get my mailing list up to 1800 now, with 75 or so on my reviews list and 45 who are kind enough to be beta readers.

I would explore instafreebie if you're not already there - you can post sample chapters instead of entire novels, and people will still download and join the list.

Also, that SF/F swap list I mentioned: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1163390753699773/

and there's another here which I haven't visited as much: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sffswaps/

[Sonya Bateman]

Thanks, Simon. I'll definitely check all this out if / when I decide that I have the heart to go on. (I probably will ... I am Charlie Brown, endlessly trying to kick the d***ed football)


I appreciate the advice!

[Simon Haynes]

Sorry - that was meant to be instafreebie, not instafree. I'm running on empty, it's 4.20am here and I'm falling out of my chair.

[missingalaska]

To be clear, this is how I arrived at this list of books. From Amazon's main page, I went to the menu button at the top and clicked Kindle eReaders & Books, then Kindle Books, then used the left-hand menu to navigate to the main Fantasy category.

I assume these were sorted by "Featured"?  If so, release date plays into it. Some of those books were probably new releases that still ranked high because they just came out. That said, I personally think the algorithm for "Featured" was tweaked in September -- explaining many of the wonky sales that people have been seeing.

[WasAnn]

I just did the same test, but with Science Fiction and a few other categories. Totally bizarre results here too. Gotta wonder what that's all about.

[PaulineMRoss]

This sounds like the poplist (so called because it used to be sorted by 'popularity'). Nowadays it's 'Featured'. The poplist is NOT the same as the bestseller list. It takes into account a number of things, not just how many copies the book has sold -- things like price, for example. The algorithm is quite different from the bestseller list, and a lot of older and/or low-ranking books linger on the poplist well after they drop off the bestseller list.
We authors tend to obsess about the bestseller list, but most searches on Amazon end up with some variant of the poplist.
PS If PhoenixS were here, she would answer this question much, much better.

[GeneDoucette]

I think Amazon is moving around some furniture right now.

[guest120]

This is an interesting and confusing subject. I'll be following along for sure, hoping I can learn something. Thanks for posting about this, Sonya. 

[dgcasey]

It sounds to me like you went and found the Featured lists from the drop down menus near the top of the screen. This is NOT the true Top 100 list in any category. The best way to find the Top 100 is to find a book in the category you're interested in and scrolling down to the rankings in the details of the book. Then you can click on the category you want and it will be the true Top 100 in that category and there won't be any Sponsored listings in that list.

Looking at the line below, you could click on Epic, on Fantasy, SciFi & Fantasy, all the way back to Kindle eBooks.

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Epic

But, if you click on the categories that are right above your book's cover image and title, you get a much different list. For example, if I click on the SciFi & Fantasy link above, Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys is #1, but if I go to the SciFi & Fantasy page of best sellers, this book doesn't show up in the first ten pages of listings and I stopped at ten.

[Becca Mills]

I think Pauline and dgcasey are right that these weird looking results come from looking at the popularity list, not the bestsellers list. Edward Robertson, Phoenix Sullivan, and others figured out the basic components of the pop list algorithm in 2012. Sales go into the mix, but also momentum and staying power. Back then, free downloads factored in at a reduced rate (not sure if they still do), and KU borrows must factor in now (but I'm not sure how). At any rate, because the pop list algorithm is more complicated, books with lower straight-up sales rank may show up higher on a pop list than expected.

[Kathy Dee]

I just did the same test, but with Science Fiction and a few other categories. Totally bizarre results here too. Gotta wonder what that's all about.

Its just that Amazon is not ordering the list strictly according to BSR rank - that's what your test has shown. That means it is using other factors in its ordering of the bestseller list (in addition) e.g. sales velocity. for example.

[DougM]

I work on multiple computers. I've had Amazon look different on different computers even when logged in. Which is the test and which is real? I have no clue.