We're list-crazy these days. Everything is ranked: books, movies, radio and TV shows, Web sites, video games. The lists are dutifully reported in newspapers, magazines, and even mentioned on news broadcasts. Who's No. 1 today? Who's up and who's down? How many gazillion dollars did the latest Hollywood blockbuster rake in last weekend?
Actually, this stuff matters a lot: Most of your sales happen after you're on a list, because that's how lots of people discover you. For years, big publishers have used every trick in the book to break onto lists like the New York Times Best Sellers. One way is to offer huge discounts to certain retailers who place big orders, making demand appear strong.
For struggling authors, Amazon is the most democratic list because everyone gets on it, whether they sell tons of books or just a few. Each author who has sold at least one copy of his or her book on Amazon is ranked somewhere in
the 4-million-title catalog. The top dog has an Amazon Sales Rank of 1, and is racking up thousands of sales a day. The worst laggard is ranked 3,500,000-plus, selling perhaps one copy every few years.
Just for kicks, plenty of authors buy a copy or two of their book on Amazon, just to watch their Sales Rank spike a few thousand notches higher toward No. 1. But your Sales Rank slides right back down unless someone else buys another copy pretty soon.
Whether an author is No. 5 or No. 539,000, many simply can't resist checking their rank several times a day. And since Amazon's bestseller list is recalculated hourly based on the preceding hour's sales, the list changes 24 times a day. It's so dynamic, a short burst of sales can shoot a book toward the top. And that's what makes it fairly easy to create a bestseller on Amazon--or rig one, depending on your point of view.
True, Amazon is the world's biggest bookstore. But you'd need tons more sales to make the New York Times list, which is based on weekly sales from 4,000 bookstores and wholesalers serving another 60,000 retailers. With an Amazon Bestseller Campaign, however, you might simply line up 250 people to buy your book at 3 a.m. next Sunday, and you're No. 1. Sure, it's only for an hour, but you can put "bestselling author" on your resume for the rest of your life, right?
Well, let's get real. "Ranking high on Amazon certainly feels good, but it doesn't take many sales to achieve that," said Jacqueline Deval, publisher of Hearst Books and author of Publicize Your Book.
The problem is, Bestseller Campaigns are a seductive "quick fix" for authors who feel they don't have the time, energy, or know-how for real grass-roots marketing. It's frustrating to pour your heart and soul into a book for months or years, and then nobody buys it. Amazon Bestseller Campaigns can sound like a good solution, simply because they promise instant success.