A lot of online booksellers wonder about the mysteries of the Amazon Revenues Rank. These booksellers agitate over what is the Amazon profits rank - how is it calculated, when is it calculated and exactly does it all mean and when will my book will sell because I hate seeing it on the shelf. What is Amazon's algorithm for calculating the rank and if I know the main algorithm will it help?

The bottom line on the Amazon Sales List is this - the lower the number the faster the reserve should sell. What this means that if you have a book with a forty five, 000 sales rank and another with a 600, 000 sales rank the one with a 40, 000 rank is at higher demand. Does this mean the lower rank will sell initial? Not necessarily - you need to factor in supply, your price point plus the books condition. The lower ranked book likely has many many them for sale on the Amazon marketplace so your copy should be priced to move as other copies are going to be listed soon after yours and they will likely beat your price.

I recently acquired a copy of Tom Dorsey's book Nuclear Jellyfish (I still have it unfortunately). I listed it on Amazon online to match lowest price for its condition and expected it to offer in a day or two given that the book had just also been released. Weeks have gone by and the book is still on this shelf because the price dropped on it almost immediately and that i am terrible at repricing my books with just about any regularity. There are, of course , dozens of copies of the book available for purchase and it is likely heading to penny seller territory soon enough. Their Amazon rank at the time I listed it was below twelve, 000. Usually the book sells quickly but sales and profits rank alone is not a guarantee.

I have had books with good ranks (in the millions) go immediately. This is often textbooks that are out of print and there are no other copies for sale or perhaps the copies that are listed are prohibitively expensive.

Amazon Product sales Rank is predominately a buying tool for me. Revenue Rank and price are the two main factors throughout considering what books I buy. If it has a excessive resale value I will generally buy a book regardless of their Amazon rank. The lower the resale price the lower the actual sales rank needs to be. Generally any book that provides for less then $5 I will not bother with regardless of list. Between $5 and $10 the rank needs to be small and above $10 I am willing to have books always be between 400k and 800k in rank. Above that the particular book needs to be at least $12. All of this is fluid and is determined by how much inventory I have and how sales are.