Friday, July 13, 2007

Rank and File   [John J. Miller]

If you've written a book anytime in the last ten years, you've probably become intimately familiar with your Amazon.com sales rank — it doesn't reveal how many copies are selling, but it's instant feedback on how well you're promoting your book. Does your rank improve when you appear on TV? (The answer is almost always yes, though some shows are much better than others.) How about when you write an op-ed for a major metropolitan paper, or appear on a local radio station? (Much more ambiguous.)

A blog can have a powerful effect. About 24 hours ago, I mentioned Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters here. At the time, its Amazon rank was #343,381. At 4:30 pm yesterday, it was #33,609 and the site announced "only 5 left in stock"—a nice improvement. I checked back a minute ago, and the book had inched up to #32,213 and there are "only 4 left in stock." It now may improve slightly, simply because of this post, but in the next couple of days its rank will almost certainly drop, probably to about where it was before yesterday. Unless someone else blogs about it, of course.

Want to conduct a little experiment? Looking at my bookshelf, I see Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement, by Kevin Smant. It was published about five years ago. Its current Amazon rank is #1,067,807. Come back here this afternoon or tonight and click the link again. It will be doing a lot better.

07/13 07:03 AMShare