BETA Means “Not Everything Is Working Correctly, Maybe”

I do not claim to be a computer expert, but I do know something about how they work.  I know what an algorithm is.  I know how they’re supposed to work, and I know that when there’s a pattern that is evident all the time EXCEPT in one specific case, that specific case must have some “difference” that causes it to be an exception.

Some background:

As you may know, I have a variety of small paperbacks and eBooks for sale on Amazon.  I don’t sell books that often, so when I do there’s cause for celebration (about 130-150 per year, to be honest).  That’s over five different titles, but just two paperbacks make up almost 80% of sales – The ABCs of Craps (over 50%) and The ABCs of 21 (almost 27%).

Amazon has a variety of features in their sales reporting system that shows you how you’re doing; all sorts of sales reports, royalties estimators, and the like.  They’ve made several changes over the years, and now have a new BETA program that shows “Sales Ranking” for the various books in a variety of categories (overall, and the ones you assign to your books).

This is where Amazon’s “algorithm” comes in.  Obviously, the more books you sell, the higher your ranking.  Boy, that’s tough to figure out.  The Sales Ranking is updated hourly, which means it’s more “real-time” than the Sales Report, which always takes a day or two to “settle” before posting.  I’m cool with that, recognizing that charges have to go through, be posted, all of that.

I’ve noticed that when I check Sales Ranking and suddenly, my ranking goes UP, this must mean I’ve sold a book, and sure enough, a day or two later a sale is recorded in the Sales Report.

Except for one book, The ABCs of 21.  For some reason, there’s no sync between sales and rank change. 

Here’s a table showing sales and rank “bumps” for my Craps book (from the graphs I see in my reports).  Note that the last bump has yet to show up in sales (but I know it will, today or tomorrow):

Rank jump on	Sale made on	Days between	Books sold
3/17/2021	3/19/2021	2	1
3/21/2021	3/23/2021	2	1
3/25/2021	3/26/2021	1	1
3/27/2021	3/28/2021	1	1
3/29/2021	3/30/2021	1	1
4/1/2021	4/3/2021	2	1
4/6/2021	4/8/2021	2	1
4/8/2021	4/9/2021	1	1
4/12/2021	4/14/2021	2	1
4/14/2021	probably 4-17	2-3	1

And now, here’s the same for The ABCs of 21.  I had to go back further than 30 days to show more activity, but it’s still fucked up.  

Rank jump on	Sale made on	Days between	Books sold
8/30/2020	9/6/2020	7	1
	10/28/2020	???	1
11/12/2020	11/15/2020	3	1
11/27/2020	12/1/2020	4	1
11/30/2020	12/2/2020	2	1
	12/5/2020	???	1
	3/10/2021	???	1
3/18/2021	3/21/2021	3	1
	3/28/2021	???	4
4/2/2021	4/4/2021	2	1
	4/13/2021	???	1

Different, huh?  Look at the sales on 3/28.  You’re trying to tell me I sold FOUR BOOKS ON ONE DAY and the RANKING DIDN’T CHANGE A BIT?

Well, Amazon is telling me that.

I’ve written to them (well, we’ve gone back and forth) about this, and every time, they say the same thing using different words:

• “…there are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria. Sales, categories, other books determine the ranks, you are being monitoring your tittles but there are lot of tittles that will include on how the rank of your books change.”

• “I do understand your concern, let me explain you how does it works. I've confirmed that the ranking for your book(s) is correct. There are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria.”
• “I've checked your book and also confirmed that the ranking for your book(s) is correct as my colleague previously have mentioned.  There are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria.”

So, according to Amazon, all is well.  Certainly not their spelling and/or grammar, but that’s a discussion for another day.

After three days of arguing, I gave up (for a time) and went back to check my other books.  As I mentioned, I don’t sell many of ‘em, so I had to dig further, but I found that they also do the same “Rank up, wait two days, Sale posted” dance.  Except…one of the books shows “weirdly” in the graph.  Like so:

Units Ordered = 0?  Then what are those little bumps for?

And so far, Amazon hasn’t responded to this.  Can’t imagine why.

So why is this such a big deal?  Two reasons; first, success begets success.  I know that higher-ranked books sell better because potential customers are lazy and won’t scroll through hundreds of titles to find what they’re looking for.  If you’re not in the top few pages, forget it.  I know this is so because I sell more books when I “sell more books;” also, I do the same thing.

The second reason is far more important.  If this is happening to my account, it CAN’T be the ONLY problem.  I know this because of another situation a long time ago when I argued with my former ISP about our business website.  Overnight, all my changes disappeared and an older version was in its place.  I knew what happened – they backed up and restored the wrong version, and if it happened to my website it happened to a slew of others.  But when I called Tech Support, I got the old runaround about how I must have done something wrong and how I needed to clear my cache and perhaps reboot my system and on and on.  I finally was able to talk to the head of the firm (who was a customer of the ice cream shop, so he knew me), and sure as shit, they discovered I was right.  This happened again not two months later, and…same thing.  I got the runaround, I called the President, and they had to admit they were wrong and I was right and they restored the correct version.  Again.

From then on, I had no further problems when calling Tech Support, most likely because they had a large black asterisk next to my name which meant “Don’t fuck with the old man; he knows what he’s doing.”

I hope that Amazon will also install a black asterisk next to my name soon.