sunflowers | Richard Bowker

After getting as high as about #46 on the Nook bestseller list, Senator is starting to fade like the Tampa Bay Rays. Its sudden rise in the rankings got me thinking about how they are calculated. A brief tour of the Internet convinced me that this is a rat-hole from which one may never return. The algorithms are proprietary and probably change periodically, so it’s all guesswork.

Since I’m dealing with a publisher rather than publishing my books myself, I don’t see the daily sales figures on Amazon and B&N, so there is no easy way for me to see how the ranking tracks these sales numbers. But lots of self-published writers apparently have nothing better to do, and they are more than happy to opine about who the rankings are calculated.

The consensus, if you care, is that the ranking represents something like a 30-day moving average, with more recent sales weighted more heavily than sales earlier in the cycle. There is probably some residual effect from sales prior to the 30-day period, so a book that sells five copies a year will have a higher ranking than a book that sells one copy. I have no idea if this is anything like the truth, but it seems plausible to me. And how many sales does a particular ranking represent? This looks like a reasonable guess. Of course, that’s for Amazon. Barnes & Noble would presumably be something like 20% of that.

Anyway, the sales on Barnes & Noble have started to get Senator some reviews there. Here is a remarkably bad one that I enjoyed (sort of). It’s by our friend Anonymous and is titled “Awful”:

Was there a good guy anywhere in this mess? However samples at end were even worse and can now avoid all in future mom

What’s impressive about this is that the writer feels obliged to trash the samples as well as the novel. Also, what’s up with the word “mom” at the end? Is the writer trying to insinuate that “Anonymous” is actually my mother? That’s harsh.

To make myself feel better, here’s a photo of some sunflowers from my garden: