Thanks to Renee Blodgett for her kind words about New Influencers. She admits she hasn’t read it yet, but expects it to be great. Now those are the kinds of critics I like!
The prolific Rob Enderle also said some very nice things about the book in his TechNews World column, which is widely syndicated. My thanks to him, also.
I have to admit to having developed a fascination with the Amazon sales ranking over the last couple of weeks particularly as New Influencers has moved into the top 10,000. I tend to check it every few hours and my mood can vary according to whether it’s up or down.
I guess my mood varies a lot, because the book has run the gamut from 1,500 to 70,000 in just the last week. Its rank can easily move 30,000 places in a day. I looked around for an explanation of how the ranking works and found an interesting one on Web Pro News, but the bottom line is that it’s Amazon’s little secret and no one outside of that company really has a clue.
Perhaps more importantly, no one has figured out a direct correlation between the sales ranking and actual book sales. Perhaps this is why my publisher refuses to pay any attention to it. And I try to ignore it. I can quit whenever I want. Really.
Paul, I haven’t read New Influencers yet either, but since I enjoy reading your blog, I expect the book will be equally valuable — ordered it from Amazon and it will be here this week. I’ve always wondered about those Amazon ranking numbers and what they mean. Evidently, not much.
Here is something to help you monitor your Amazon Sales Rank: a chart of the sales rank.
You are right that the absolute rank has no direct relation with no. of copies sold. But you can compare the sales rank of similar books (a above chart page make it easy through the “Compare” button) and get an idea of how it doing in relation to others.