M.J. Rose is encouraging authors to stop checking their Amazon ranking. She says, “the ranking does not take into account the third party sales,” they aren’t cumulative anymore, and they mean nothing outside the Top 100.
She and commenters include some interesting facts, like this one: “Last Thursday, one of our books zoomed from a sales rank of 32,154 to 872, peaking at 665 on Friday. How many copies did we sell in total last week? 17.”
Does that mean a couple friends and I could buy 25 copies of our favorite book over a week’s time and rocket it into Amazon’s Top 100? Hmmm.
Third party?
I should edit that. It means the ranking doesn’t take third party sales into account. So when you don’t but from Amazon.com directly, it doesn’t influence the book’s ranking.