Writer Sanctum
Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: TimothyEllis on October 14, 2019, 12:32:20 PM
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I was just reading Quora answers about best seller status on books.
One answer pointed out there was a difference between sales and actual reads of a book.
:icon_idea: Lightbulb moment.
With a KU only rank chart, based on reads, not borrows, we'd see actual read based results.
So instead of sales which never get read, or borrows which never get read, we see a true rank based on full reads. It means KDP needs to do the math of number of reads divided by KENPC for each book, but the result is a true rank based on actual reading of a book.
When you make #1 in a category, you can truely say it was a best read book.
Amazon will never do it though, as it it might highlight how useless their existing system is.
But it was a good thought, I thought. (And yes, caffeine hasn't kicked in yet.)
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Isn't this just Amazon charts? Of course this includes non KU books as well, and only includes the top 20.
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Isn't this just Amazon charts? Of course this includes non KU books as well, and only includes the top 20.
No, I'm talking about a pure KU only chart, based on reads instead of borrows.
No sales.
It's a variation on what I've been suggesting for ages, by separating sales and KU into separate charts.
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Isn't this just Amazon charts? Of course this includes non KU books as well, and only includes the top 20.
No, I'm talking about a pure KU only chart, based on reads instead of borrows.
No sales.
It's a variation on what I've been suggesting for ages, by separating sales and KU into separate charts.
So, my interpretation on how to become a bestselling author is making to the top of the charts no matter how it is calculated. If the two were separated (sales and actual full reads), wouldn't it make it that much harder to hit #1?
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So, my interpretation on how to become a bestselling author is making to the top of the charts no matter how it is calculated. If the two were separated (sales and actual full reads), wouldn't it make it that much harder to hit #1?
Not really.
The charts would shake out according to sales and full reads.
Books which get both, will probably not change rank much at all. A book with no real sales but all KU reads, might drop like a stone on the sales chart, but shoot up on the KU chart. Or vise versa.
The idea has both ranks on the product page.
In actual fact, day 1 mailing list sales could put a book into number one slot where it wouldn't before, because it was being held back by lack of KU activity on the day. And day 2 reads might do the same for the KU chart, where day 2 sales might hold it back now.
And the separation would show how effective ads actually were for both.
I'm not concerned about ranks. They would shake out, and make more sense than they do now.
By eliminating the 'borrow with zero reads effect', the sales rank will be more real, and the KU rank would not be affected by campaigns designed to get downloads just to game rank. So the better a book does in actual page full reads in the KU chart, the better rank it will have.
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"And the separation would show how effective ads actually were for both."
I'm for anything that helps us see how effective ads are. I still have trouble adding 8 and 5. Always have, even if I write the answer ten times, I still have to use my fingers. So all this mathematical stuff is a deep dark secret to me. However, I don't think that's one of Amazon's priorities, unfortunately.
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If they implement your suggestion then they should change the "buy ranking" chart to only count sales of books that were actually read. In addition, if someone only reads part of a purchased book it shouldn't count as a full sale. grint
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If they implement your suggestion then they should change the "buy ranking" chart to only count sales of books that were actually read. In addition, if someone only reads part of a purchased book it shouldn't count as a full sale. grint
That would make a huge difference to charts.
It would also totally destroy day 1 rank, and make promotions completely pointless as far as rank is concerned.
But yes, it would be more real in terms of books being read.
It brings up another thing as well. If you negate the sale in favour of the read, then a re-read should also help rank. Since KU, Amazon has the ability to determine the read, so if every time the book was read again, it boosted it's rank, the rank charts would show which books were reader favourites.
Amazon will never do that though. Their emphasis is on money collected.
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It brings up another thing as well. If you negate the sale in favour of the read, then a re-read should also help rank...
In this imagined scenario, I foresee this being abused to the max.
Otherwise, yes, I would love to see more ranking charts, and I fail to see why Amazon wouldn't want to provide them. As a reader, I love curated window shopping. The more lists I see, the more books I buy.