Amazon rankings -- The good, the bad, and the meaningless
One of the first things newly published authors do is go "gaga" (aka "crazy, nuts, obsessive") over their Amazon rankings. The rankings change hourly, which makes it even more tantalizing to just go take a quick peek. And for the truly ranking-crazed, Amazon has sites for the U.S., UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, and China -- giving an already procrastinating author limitless opportunities to waste their precious writing time checking their ranks in seven countries. This can quickly deteroriate into a ratings-checking addiction. I've heard checking Amazon rankings called "crack for authors." It's true.
What it boils down to is that Amazon rankings are like an auto accident -- you know you should keep moving, and don't slow down to look, but you do it anyway. Basically, Amazon rankings don't mean diddly-squat to your sales, it's merely a ranking of how your book sells versus other books, not how many books you've sold -- which is the number that your publisher cares about.
One of the best explanations of what Amazon's rankings mean (and more importantly, what they don't mean) comes from the venerable (and much missed) Miss Snark. As always, she's priceless. ; )
Coming up this week: I'll continue my series on "Things I didn't know until I got published " with advertising and book promo that you have to do for yourself, and more. I'll also give you an update on how the edits for The Trouble With Demons are going.
Lisa
What it boils down to is that Amazon rankings are like an auto accident -- you know you should keep moving, and don't slow down to look, but you do it anyway. Basically, Amazon rankings don't mean diddly-squat to your sales, it's merely a ranking of how your book sells versus other books, not how many books you've sold -- which is the number that your publisher cares about.
One of the best explanations of what Amazon's rankings mean (and more importantly, what they don't mean) comes from the venerable (and much missed) Miss Snark. As always, she's priceless. ; )
Coming up this week: I'll continue my series on "Things I didn't know until I got published " with advertising and book promo that you have to do for yourself, and more. I'll also give you an update on how the edits for The Trouble With Demons are going.
Lisa
posted by Lisa Shearin at
8:01 AM
2 Comments:
What? Once we get published there are more things on the net for us to procrastinate with?
GOODIE!!!!
Oh yeah. ; ) Let's see. . .Amazon, Barnes & Noble, book review sites, review blogs, author buddy blogs, and then there's setting a Google Alert to catch any mention of your name and book title. That way anything anyone writes about you online, you get to see. I recommend doing that (setting a Google Alert). It'll let you stay on top of what's being said, and save you valuable time hunting for it yourself.
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