As expected, Amazon have now fixed things in their favour and altered my dashboard orders to fit the Month to Date.

Frankly, I think they’ve fiddled - and I’ve been diddled, and robbed blind. I don’t care what they say.

I think Amazon has abandoned its algorithm and now ranks purely on sales performance based on AMS ads. 

Oddly, the book linked below has been a permafree for years, and it has ranked in the top 100  in its genre for years as well. What I gather from that is that Amazon credits us for each sale, and as they accumulate, it adds to the rank. I could be wrong, but I don't know of any other way to explain it. I don't do AMS ads on this book.

To prove that theory, I've marked several of my mystery books down to $.99 to see if I can improve the ranking for those as well. Frankly, I hadn't sold any of them for the first 15 days in May, and have since sold 29 at the lower price. It's painful to think readers these days are mostly bargain hunting, but it appears so.

Anyway, last night about 20 sales showed up all at once. Yet, I just realized this is the 20th and it always slows down when they start generating those "stupid" emails that say nothing useful.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X95M94/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2

I dont think sales overall are sagging  + most people are still kicking the ball the old way.

= people playing the new way are selling much more

Its been close to 5 months since my last book and sales have fallen off as one might expect. Still, the sales have tanked more than I had expected.

My Amazon sales have absolutely tanked this month. I mean I haven't even made 20 bucks when by now I should be in the triple digits. I promote, I have things on sale, but nada. Zip. Zilch.
So I'm going back to the drawing board and working on a new project to try not to stress myself over it.