US Kindle rankings

Hi folk,

My novel, Nature Mage, seems to be doing pretty well on the U.S. Amazon kindle rankings, but I just want to check my understanding, in case I'm reading it wrong. The ranking for that book used to spike up and down, with single sales creating huge leaps in ranking, but recently it's been going up and up, with no real dips, and I'm now hovering around the 20,000th rank (of over a million). The best position thus far has been 14506. I've been monitoring it throughout the day (in an obsessive, unhealthy manner) and my position can leap up several times in twenty four hours. Does this mean I'm selling several copies every day? If so, that's pretty good for a debut novelist with no U.S. based marketing!

Dunc

Duncan,

Why are you obsessing about your rankings (that change every hour) when you can check the actual sales on KDP reports?

Log in to your KDP account, and click on the Reports link. If you are already logged in, click this link:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/reports

Hi Shelagh,

I may have been labouring under a misapprehension. I thought KDP was only for authors who had self-published directly through Amazon. The kindle version of Nature Mage was something my publisher arranged, and when previously logging into KDP it wasn't listing my title.

Looking at it now it's asking me to give bank details and how I want royalties, but all of that happens through my publisher. Confused.

Okay, then you can check your sales through Author Central. Set up author pages on UK:

https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/

and US:

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

Claim your books in paperback and Kindle format at both sites. You can then check the "Sales info" -- you won't see actual number of Kindle sales; a spike on the graph represents a sale. You will see the ranking going up and down.

Yeah that's where I'm getting my information from - those graphs. Sorry, I must not have made myself clear. It seems to be the best source of information available to me at the moment, but am just a bit surprised by the apparent boost to my U.S. sales. I'm off to write for a few hours. Have a great day.

Amazon rankings are impossible to interpret. The only numbers that interest me are the monthly royalty payments.

Fair enough Al. Perhaps when I'm in a better position I will feel similarly, but my royalty statements come twice a year, and they are significantly behind the times as well. My sales figures for January to June will only become clear on the November report! It's tricky to be that patient!

Hehe, I feel your pain! Being brand new to all of this, I find myself constantly looking at the reports. I published on Mon and Tues this week and finally saw ONE whole book sale last night lol. My expectations were not great, my hopes were high though. But, one sale is a start albeit very slow!! I just have no idea how to market yet, nobody knows about my book accept those that I work with and most of the people I work with are elderly, few are interested in YA books. It sounds like you are doing fairly well in the market though, keep it up and good luck to you!!

Congratulations, Duncan!

As our colleagues noted above, Amazon rankings are hard to interpret and sales information is not always clear other than through KDP online royalty statements for books published directly there. You may have to wait for your royalty statements from your publisher, but meantime you can also get some idea of sales if you register your book with Novelrank.com. The sales figures there are also very imperfect, but my experience is that they are under reported, so that if it shows you have ten sales in a month it is likely significantly higher. But it can give you some idea as to numbers and lots of additional graphics to track your sales.

I wish you much success with this and other projects!

Victor

My rankings had dropped to about 299,000 this week with no sales. I sold two copies of my book this morning (after marking the book up a dollar to 3.99 too) and now my ranking is 62,000. What a leap!

Congratulations!

Thanks, it was just two copies but it felt good and a little bit encouraging. But that does prove that price had no bearing. I had it down to .99 and nothing happened, moved it up to 3.99 which I think is still a great deal for a novel (especially mine!! hehe) and I get a couple sales. Go figure hehe