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.