Amazon Bestseller Ranks – New Feature at PublishDrive

We have finished last year with quietly unraveling a new feature. PublishDrive is now displaying Amazon ranks directly on the platform, at the level of books.

While Amazon Bestseller Ranks are surrounded by mystery, they are very important in following how your books have been doing recently with regards to the industry.

But checking the ranks of all of your books in all the different Amazon stores in all categories can be tiring. The new Rankings feature follows your recent ranking in all major Amazon stores your books are sold in. It also creates a handy graph of your book’s journey.

What are Amazon Bestseller Ranks good for?

In addition to warming your heart and filling you with eternal pride, Amazon Ranks are a useful tool to check whether your books are in the right category. If your book is ranking high in two categories but ranking low in another, you can consider changing the category to see if it helps.

You can also use your best working categories to fine-tune your keywords: if you know your best category, you can create adverts focused on these keywords.

As Kindle Bestseller Ranks are calculated daily, you can see the immediate impact of your marketing efforts. You will see immediately whether your strategies are working or not.

You can also see your top countries on Amazon right away. You have always had the possibility to learn whether your book is selling better on Amazon in Italy or in Germany, but only a few people bother to check. However, if you see directly that your book is ranking up (or down) in a regional Amazon store, you will know whether to target that country directly with campaigns and adverts.

How to achieve a high Kindle Rank

Reaching a high rank will not only result in higher sales at the short term, but in an increased number of reviews and visibility. Books receiving the little orange ‘flag’ stating #1 Best seller are not necessarily better than books not receiving it, but will draw in more sales.

But how to achieve a high Amazon rank? Let’s turn to the experts. Dave at the Kindlepreneur has a bulletproof method: he recommends you to analyse the competition, know your options and choose the niche-est category possible.

He and others also agree that higher sales rank does not mean higher sales neither at the long, nor the short term. Amazon’s ranking algorithms are sensitive to peaks and lows, and it is hard to get them but even harder to sustain them. John Doppler at the ALLi is experimenting a lot with Amazon algorithms and he knows his highs from his lows. It is worth checking out.

See your Bestseller Ranks on the PublishDrive website

You can reach it under ‘Books’ by clicking on the ‘Info’ panel, if you have Amazon switched on under your channels and if you have made at least one sale on Amazon.

As it is the case for every new feature: our Ranking interface is still only beta. It needs your feedback and opinion.

Don’t hesitate to let us know how to improve it – as always, we are eager to hear your valuable insight.