How Is Amazon Sales Rank Calculated?

The Amazon sales KDP platform is one of the best ways for any user to publish their book on the Internet and receive sales from all over the world. One of the things that will haunt you the most is Amazon KDP sales rankings. If you want your book to have a minimum of success in Amazon KDP, you must bear in mind that its position in the sales rankings is very important. 

Focus On The Subcategories

Amazon KDP has several rankings that are divided into subcategories depending on the book you are looking for / selling. Amazon KDP is full of authors who want to position their books to sell more every day. You must take into account who you want to fight and your possibilities.

 Generally, you forget to position yourself in the general sales lists. These lists are the ones that appear as soon as you open Amazon KDP. In them, you will be fighting with the most important books. We are not going to tell you that it is impossible, but extremely difficult. The best thing is to find the Amazon KDP subcategories in which you have located your book and focus on them.

It Doesn’t Just Depend On You

Some people have the wrong idea of thinking that their book is in one position or another because of what they do with it or they market it has. The reality is that this list is made up of, and depends on, all the books that are in it. You must bear in mind that if you are in position X and you move without having done anything relevant, this movement may be the fault of another book. 

The sales rankings take into account factors and sales of all books. That you do things well does not mean that others cannot do better and surpass you. For this reason, you can never relax, not even when you are in the number 1 position, another author can come and do it better than you

Amazon does not have an entry on its website in which it explains all the details of the positioning. The person in charge of placing your book in one place or another is an algorithm that takes into account many factors. The most important is the sales obtained.

If you do not sell, it will be very difficult to climb positions in a ranking, for example, of classic novels. And it won’t do you any good to have a one-time peak in sales of one or two days. Amazon rewards constant sales each day so that your list is not affected by a temporary and fleeting sales spike. Currently, we can guess that the Amazon KDP algorithm uses 2 figures to calculate the position of your book: yesterday’s and today’s market. 

Imagine that each sale of your book is equivalent to 1 point: if you sell 15 books you will have 15 points. The rankings of Amazon are updated every hour, so to position your book right now Amazon will take into account sales have achieved today and the previous days. The key to the equation is that yesterday’s sales are divided by 2 so that the ranking rewards consistency. And so on with the sales of the day before yesterday, etc.

Example: If Yesterday you sold 40 books. Today you have sold 50 books.

40/2 + 50 = 70 books / points

70 points are what Amazon will use to place your book in one position or another. Of course, always depending on the points/sales of your competitors. The number of the previous days is very important for the algorithm, as this system rewards constant sales and not so many peaks. The key to Amazon KDP sales rankings is consistent sales.