Amazon Author Rank

Amazon Author RankWe all know about best seller lists.  Best seller lists make a different.  A lot of people buy based on what is on the top of the list.  This is not just laziness, best seller lists are a way to find out what is good.  There is a relationship between what is good and what is selling.  It is not a 1 to 1 correlation, but there is a correlation.

Last week Amazon started something new, Amazon Author Rank.  It is a best seller list for the authors, not the books.  NPR had an article about this yesterday. And I have to agree.  When it is the books being ranked it seems more objective.  When the Authors are being ranked it seems more personal, a popularity contest..

Amazon has not released how the Author Rank works (or how its best seller rankings work), so we really don’t know how objective it is.  I wish it was not updated hourly.  I really don’t want my favorite authors to be obsessively checking their ranking and not writing.  I want them to be writing.  But it is an interested thing to look at, at least occasionally.

 

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