Amazon has several ways to describe how a book is doing.
Sales, of course, is a big one. But, honestly, it’s hard to complete with the big publishing companies that can push out thousands of books all over the country every time they hit the ‘publish button’.
There is an interesting category on Amazon reserved for the books that have received Top Ratings by their readers.
And I found my book listed there. And it’s doing VERY well!
Amazon has listed my book, The Universe Builders, in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Then Amazon has several sub-categories for each. I found my book listed in three of them. Now the exact ranking may change a little from day-to-day, but this is where my book ranked on January 12, 2015:
SCIENCE FICTION – SPACE OPERA — #17
Just to put this into perspective, if The Universe Builders is #17, what are some of the other books in the Amazon Top 100 List for Science Fiction – Space Opera list? I was amazed by the books I found there:
- The Dragon Riders of Pern (Anne Mc Caffrey) is #5.
- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) is #8.
- Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) is #39.
- Star Wars (Timothy Zahn) is #43.
- A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs) is #54.
- The Chronicles of Pern (Ann McCaffrey) is #86.
- Childhood’s End (Arthur C. Clarke) is #100.
Hmm…
SCIENCE FICTION – METAPHYSICAL — #3
Wow.
FANTASY – METAPHYSICAL — #10
Wow, again!
THE COMPETITION
How could my book be listed this high? How many books am I competing with? Amazon shows the number of books in each category:
HOW DOES AMAZON DETERMINE THE RANKING?
Amazon bases their Top Rated rankings on something very simple: customer ratings. They compile the ratings of all the books in each category and then rank them against each other. (To be technical, Amazon won’t include a book unless it has a certain number of ratings.)
So how can my book can be ranked above so many others?
There is one answer: It is because of YOU! All the readers who took time to post your reviews on Amazon have given me an amazing 4.7 star average (out of 5.0 star maximum).
That is the reason I am ranking so VERY well.
For this, I thank you, my readers, VERY much!
Sincerely,
Steve LeBel
