Rankings

At half past eight this morning I wrote #579,495 on my Twitter feed. You might have seen it and thought "Eh?"

Right now - two hours later - it would be #579,643.

What am I talking about? Amazon.com have helpfully included author ranking on their Author Central pages - you know, those pages you go to to see how well/badly your books are performing. Well, now there's something else to make you feel all warm and snuggling and secure.

Except, losing 150 places in two hours hasn't made me feel any of those things.

Amazon say: This list makes it easy for readers to discover the best-selling authors on Amazon.com overall and within a selection of major genres.

Only the top 100 authors will be on lists visible by buyers. Sorry, Mr 101, you've lost out!

But, if you are the best selling author in your genre, your readers probably know this. It's your books that pop up in the advertising, in the lists, first in the searches. It's your books that have the marketing budget so everyone knows your book is arriving weeks or months before the publishing date. It's your books that can have half a million pre-orders.

What about everyone else? The mid-listers, the self publishers, the small press/ebook exclusive writers (ahem...) What if you happen to be the very bottom author, the very last person in the list, will anyone at all buy your book? I, for one, really don't need to see any more graphs on a gradually downhill trajectory.

Amazon are big. It would have been a lovely thought if someone could have said, in one of their big meetings, "Why don't we flip the list and have that bottom person at the top? Wouldn't that be a warm and lovely thing for us to do?"

Because, to be fair, the best sellers don't really need help. It's everyone else - the people who sell one or two books a week, rather than an hour!