How Many Amazon Sales Do You Actually Need To Hit a Bestseller List?
The simplest form of the answer may surprise you!
This post is an excerpt from my book, Get Your Book Selling on Amazon (Book Sales Supercharged #3) and references another killer book on the topic by David Gaughran, Amazon Decoded: A Marketing Guide to the Kindle Store (Let's Get Publishing Book 4).
The Bestseller Lists are not really a list, they are large sets of lists that behave the same. David Gaughran estimates that there are 13,000 categories and subcategories in the Amazon store. To be clear, that means there are 13,000ish Bestseller Lists (and Popularity Lists) on Amazon. And then under all of those categories, there are also Free Lists and New Release Lists, in addition to the paid lists. And knowing Amazon’s goal to remain the best recommendation engine on the planet, that number is probably a low estimate by now because Amazon is adding more categories, keywords, and tags every day.
The Bestseller Lists
You can find the Bestseller Lists by clicking on “Best Sellers,” then “Books” in the sidebar, then drilling down to the category or subcategory of interest. You can also find the Bestseller Lists by clicking on any of the links under Sales Rank on any book product page, then navigating in the sidebar.
These lists tell you exactly what Amazon states they tell you, which is, “Our most popular products based on sales. Updated hourly.”
Every Bestseller List is a ranking of:
Sales
+ borrows (from readers of books in the Kindle Unlimited program)
For the category or subcategory in question, and
Over time (usually rolled up in about 24-hour increments).
That’s all! Sometimes people think there is more to this ranking, but there isn’t.
There’s a visible number attached to this called Sales Rank and every book that has a history of one purchased book will have an ever-fluctuating rank assigned to it. As stated by Amazon, the rank officially changes every hour, though the visibility on that can be delayed, as most authors who have ever launched a book or had a promotion probably noticed.
There are a few other things to note about how these lists work:
The lists are separated into paid, free, new release; free can never show up on the paid or new release lists, while new releases can overlap on the paid list for 30 days after publication
There is also a Top 100 list for the entire store called Movers and Shakers, but it’s not rolled out to categories yet (and may never be)
Price is not a factor at all; Amazon doesn’t care if you drop your price to $0.99 to rise in Sales Rank
The lists are ranked by ASIN rather than as a rollup of ASINs
Interesting Mathematical Features of the Bestseller Lists
While I’ve said that sales + borrows are the main determinant of the Bestseller Lists, the way Amazon degrades those sales over time gives the lists an interesting property, which is that it only takes about half the sales to maintain a Sales Rank that it took to get to the Sales Rank in the first place. Sales degrade by about 50% a day. I want to give you the curves and trajectory (the math) of how this algorithm looks across a few different scenarios:
Scenario #1 - A One-Off Spike
In the following scenario, the book is falling down the ranks pretty quickly. It has a burst of 20 sales in a day that is worth almost nothing by Day 6.
Day 1 - 20 sales
Day 2 - 10 sales
Day 3 - 5 sales
Day 4 - 2.5 sales
Day 5 - 1.25 sales
Scenario #2 - A Front-Loaded Launch
In the following scenario, the book is able to maintain a ranking that they hit at 20 sales on Day 1, by continuing to get 10 sales in the following days.
Day 1 - 20 sales
Day 2 - 10 sales + 10 sales = 20 sales
Day 3 - 5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 20 sales
Day 4 - 2.5 sales + 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 20 sales
Day 5 - 1.25 sales + 1.25 sales + 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 20 sales
Scenario #3 - Consistent Sales
What if you do as David Gaughran suggests and keep sales consistent and slightly rising for 4-5 days? In this scenario, the book rises in rank over a period of 4-6 days, as it approaches its end ranking.
Day 1 - 10 sales
Day 2 - 5 sales + 10 sales = 15 sales
Day 3 - 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 17.5 sales
Day 4 - 1.25 sales + 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 18.75 sales
Day 5 - 0.625 sales + 1.25 sales + 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 19.375 sales
Day 6 - .3125 sales + 0.625 sales + 1.25 sales + 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 19.6875 sales
Day 7 - .15625 sales + .3125 sales + 0.625 sales + 1.25 sales + 2.5 sales + 5 sales + 10 sales = 19.84375 sales
As you can see, if you had a book with 4-6 days of consistent sales at 10 sales a day, the sales form a curve over time that will continue to the edge of an equivalent 20 sales a day infinitely (I’m venturing into calculus, so apologies if you’re a little confused).
In “I don’t have a master’s degree in math” terms, what this means is that if you start selling 10 books a day, you will quickly (within 5-6 days) have a Sales Rank that effectively looks like you hit 20 sales a day first, then followed with 10 sales a day consistently thereafter.
Sales Rank Calculators Get It Wrong (Mostly)
I’m sharing this because most Sales Rank calculators get it wrong due to them counting the # of sales it takes to get to a Sales Rank versus the number of sales it takes to maintain a Sales Rank. But the number it takes to maintain a Sales Rank (about 50% of what it takes to hit it) is always the right number to go by. Why? Because as demonstrated, Sales Rank will level out within just a few days, as long as sales on the backend are consistent.
Because of this, Gaughran’s Scenario #3 is a better approach to taking your Sales Rank to a new level. Scenario #1 will produce very few results (you’ll spike then sink within a few days), Scenario #2 creates a spike then a level out (similar to a launch or possibly a newsletter promotion stack), and Scenario #3 creates a rising Sales Rank over 4-6 days.
Scenario #3 looks really good to Amazon, especially as you stretch out the consistency to 7-10 days (if possible). At this point, Amazon will see the book as a consistent seller and start to send it through Personalized Recommendations. You’ll also start to appear in the Also Boughts of other books. All of this will, of course, add to your sales numbers.
It’s worth it to pay for consistent sales in advertising because, if you can establish a pattern of consistent sales for about a week, you can teach Amazon who to recommend your book to next and get Amazon’s algorithms to take over some of your marketing.
This is the theory and the math behind how Sales Rank works, but it doesn’t always work out exactly as smoothly in implementation. However, if you can get to a Sales Rank using promotion or advertising, you should be able to maintain that Sales Rank with consistent sales (or borrows) per day at about half the level.
All of this is to say, authors tend to focus a bit too hard on Sales Rank, when in reality consistent sales are far more important. Sales Rank can’t tell you anything about your own books that your sales dashboard wouldn’t be able to tell you far better. The same is true for anyone else, so if you’re estimating someone’s sales, success, or profits based on Sales Rank, please stop. Sales Rank can’t tell you those things.
If you are launching or promoting a book, you want to have slowly rising daily sales numbers over the course of 5-10 days. this helps you achieve a stable sales rank and gets your book into Personalized Recommendations (automated email, push-notifications, and personalized carousels that are a major part of Amazon’s algorithms). Consistent or rising sales is key to maintain Sales Rank!