I need help! Is anyone a new author like I am? Can you help me?

[Paul Richard Price]

Hello my name is Paul Richard Price. I am the author of the book, The Prophecy Chronicles: Chronicle One-The Chosen One published by Outskirts Press and Lightning Source on March 20,2007. I am a new author and I am a bit confused about this whole book publishing thing. Since my book has been published my ranking in the category of prophecy was ranked as high as 167 out of 111,487 titles in that category and I was ranked as high as 26 at one time in the science fiction category on Amazon.com. I have been ranked as high as 697,000 on the over all book category. This has all been done while I only sold one book total at the time! I think that this is wrong but I don't know how to prove it one way or another. If there are any authors out there who know how to read the ranking information could you tell me if I am right on this or if I am wrong? Can they sale books as "used" when they are new on Amazon.com? I am dealing with a print on demand publisher(POD) and I was wondering if they could do this? If anyone who is an author and has used a POD could help me understand this please let me know! Thank you!
Paul

[Mark Robson]

The Amazon ranking system seems to have meaning only for Amazon. I began my writing career by self publishing 7 years ago and for a while I monitored the amazon.co.uk ranking system. It was baffling, but I worked out a rule of thumb after a while by tracking the numbers of books sold against the rankings ... then they changed the formula! After all, they wouldn't want people to actually know what the numbers meant!

I shouldn't worry about it too much. Many authors watch their ratings obsessively. I know I did. In reality it means little unless you are up in the top one hundred on the main listing ... and I can't imagine my name, or yours (no disrespect) will appear there for some time yet.

[Teresa Edgerton]

In the US, amazon updates their rankings daily and sometimes hourly. If your ranking improves dramatically (say about a million places) and then starts to plummet, it just means that you sold maybe two or three books in the same hour -- and then no more until the next time you see your the numbers improve.

So unless your ranking is consistently high, you'll learn more from watching how your numbers fluctuate than from what they are at any specific moment. Unfortunately, that "more" is not a great deal. Apparently, amazon does not expect (or want) authors to fully understand the arcana of their rankings.

[DominicTook]

Hello,

I just tried to post but i think it went wrong. Incase two appear (laughs) you'll know why.

The amazon ranking as said doesn't really mean much. I've never watched it too avidly, knowing from business that its usually not something even amazon use much themselves. They will have internal reports on their system to tell them whats going on, in much more detail.

The only real thing to do is to sell sell sell. Thats what i do and its not easy and its god damn slow. But it does work eventually. You need to cover as many angles as possible when selling and think as many creative ways of doing it as well.

Though i'd give it six months, i think it does depend on the book though. A book with mass market appeal straight off the bat, with fantastic branding and marketing and promotional material. Will do really well. I may sound as if i'm talking like a publisher but i'm just a self publisher, i still take it as seriously as they do however.

Hope that helps,

Dominic Took

[I, Brian]

You might want to fixate more on selling books, than Amazon rankings.

[Mary Hoffman]

Please do yourself a favour and NEVER LOOK AT YOUR AMAZON RANKINGS! That way madness lies. Do you want to b e a writer (i.e. to write) or do you want to be an obsessive neurotic finding ever new ways to avoid the only thing that matters, which is sitting alone with yopur keyboard and getting your quota of words done? And improving with every sentence of every book of course.
Read, read, read, write, write, write and forget the rankings. Mary