Amazon let millions of authors know via email that their work is now graded in yet another way - not just by reviews,or by comments, or by income, but now as an actual rank of every author on the Amazon system! Not that insecure, neurotic authors need more to obsess and fret over.
Consider Yourself a Success!
Now before anybody slashes their wrists, you have to consider yourself successful if you somehow manged to get your book finished and in good enough shape to actually make it to Amazon at all. Beyond that, you are a successful author if you have any sales at all. There are 8,000,000 books on Amazon, so if people are actively buying your work, you are doing well. But if you want to make a living at it, well, you need to get in the top 25,000 of all Amazon authors, maybe lower!
I'm not shy, I'll show my numbers, but I don't know whether to laugh or cry at them. I'm pretty happy to see that I'm at 1745 for history and 6939 in mystery, thriller and suspense for all of Amazon. On Kindle, my history number is 1745 with mystery and thrillers at 4906.
Of course that tells me there are a lot of authors writing books, but not so many selling enough books to make a living.
The Roots of Reno came out on Kindle in November 2011. At the time, Amazon accounted for 10% of sales, with most copies sold at bookstores. Now Amazon accounts for over 50% of my sales because it's tough keeping backlist books on the bookstore shelves!
The most sobering news from my trip to Amazon's Author Central was seeing that my overall ranking of all authors put me at number 93,189 (24,135 on Kindle). That tells me that if you only sell on Amazon, and you achieve those numbers in a year, you can afford to eat Ramen noodles every meal, but if you want to take an occasional trip to Mickey "D's", you better think of the best way to get your author ranking under 25,000. And, there are only two ways to make that happen: write better, market better. Good luck!
Thanks for reading - Al W Moe
Consider Yourself a Success!
Now before anybody slashes their wrists, you have to consider yourself successful if you somehow manged to get your book finished and in good enough shape to actually make it to Amazon at all. Beyond that, you are a successful author if you have any sales at all. There are 8,000,000 books on Amazon, so if people are actively buying your work, you are doing well. But if you want to make a living at it, well, you need to get in the top 25,000 of all Amazon authors, maybe lower!
I'm not shy, I'll show my numbers, but I don't know whether to laugh or cry at them. I'm pretty happy to see that I'm at 1745 for history and 6939 in mystery, thriller and suspense for all of Amazon. On Kindle, my history number is 1745 with mystery and thrillers at 4906.
Of course that tells me there are a lot of authors writing books, but not so many selling enough books to make a living.
The Roots of Reno came out on Kindle in November 2011. At the time, Amazon accounted for 10% of sales, with most copies sold at bookstores. Now Amazon accounts for over 50% of my sales because it's tough keeping backlist books on the bookstore shelves!
The most sobering news from my trip to Amazon's Author Central was seeing that my overall ranking of all authors put me at number 93,189 (24,135 on Kindle). That tells me that if you only sell on Amazon, and you achieve those numbers in a year, you can afford to eat Ramen noodles every meal, but if you want to take an occasional trip to Mickey "D's", you better think of the best way to get your author ranking under 25,000. And, there are only two ways to make that happen: write better, market better. Good luck!
Thanks for reading - Al W Moe
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