Online book seller Amazon has taken down an ebook which dishes the dirt on its best seller ranking system.
The Day the Kindle Died, detailed a six-month investigative effort to document how it was possible to get into Amazon's best-seller list by faking reviews, promotes inaccurate sales ranking and bestseller lists.
The book was penned by Thomas Hertog who told us that he came up with a cunning plan when he was trying to flog his financial advice book called Wealth Hazards.
As we pointed out before Christmas over five months all he had to do was buy and download his book to his Kindle 173 times. He has also written 42 customer reviews that he voted on one hundred and eight times to raise the ranking on Amazon's bestseller list and recommendation lists.
However it seems that Amazon reads TechEye and decided that having Hertog's book on its lists was a little embarrassing. He dropped us a line this morning saying that Amazon had taken the book down.
Hertog points out that Amazon has gone on record as saying that it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because "we or others" believe their message is objectionable".
It has used this rationale to defend selling some books which are fairly close to the bone and is something anyone who does not like book burnings can only applaud.
However, on December 31 it seems that anti-censorship line did not apply to books which slagged off Amazon as it was taken down.
Hertog wondered if Amazon has a double-standard or feared the truth about its best seller rankings getting out
"No one knows yet as they remain silent hoping their actions won't be noticed. The book's final chapter is aptly titled - Even Great Companies Make Mistakes – it asks Amazon CEO & Founder Jeff Bezos to fix what's wrong at Amazon. Apparently the fix is to kill the message and the messenger," he said.
Amazon has not said why it has chosen to censor the book.
The ability to pull all this off - priceless.
Secondly, did Amazon even say why it was taken down? Perhaps they took it down because this guy was blatently gaming the system to get his book on the best seller list and had nothing to do with the content.
The only reason he got the sales in the first place is because he bought enough of his own books to get himself to the top part of the best seller list where he'd be noticed. People do this all the time. He was just dumb enough to publicize it.
Paying for positive reviews to get more sales however, is viewed as fraud by the FTC and can land you in hot water in a hurry.
Also, choosing not to sell an item in your private for profit retail store is not censorship. Especially if the seller specifically and systematically violated your terms of service. Regardless of the content, the terms of service violation is enough grounds for a ban.
Also, choosing not to sell an item in your private for profit retail store is not censorship. And in this case seller specifically and systematically violated the site’s terms of service. Regardless of the content, the terms of service violation is enough grounds for a ban. Seems Amaozn took the high road by *not* removing the book.
Caveat emptor amazonia!
[Commenter's note: Moi, a media observer, wonders if
Amazon's popular and must-see book stats are just PR hype, and nothing
more. My opinion here reflects my own personal hunch about how
things operate in the land that Jeff Bezos runs.]
The next time you read in a press release or newspaper that a certain
book "has been propelled to the top 100 rankings among paid Kindle
titles on Amazon.com," don't you believe it. And the next time you
hear that a certain book "has been propelled to the top 100 rankings
among regular print book titles on Amazon.com," don't you believe it,
either.
In both cases, you've been fed a can of worms -- marketing hype white
lies. Amazon stats do not mean anything, and even worse, they
could best be described as "lies, damn lies and PR hype." These
much-ballyhooed "stats" do not represent the number of books sold, as
you have been led to believe. No, they merely represent the number of
times surfers around the world have ''searched'' on Amazon for a
particular book after reading a ''currently trending'' news story
about the tome.
Case in point, to illustrate this deception. When news broke worldwide
last week about
a controversial self-published eBook titled "A Peodophile's Guide to
Love and Pleasure", triggering a ground swell of protest on social
media networks from Twitter to Facebook,
the vanity press title suddenly found itself being ''propelled'' to
the top 100 rankings among paid
Kindle titles on Amazon. But those ranking stats did not mean people
were buying the book, or even ordering it, but merely that thousands
of curious internet surfers from London to Louisana were clicking on
the book's Amazon link just to see what
the fuss was all about. And to catch a glimpse of the cover. Much ado
about nada.
Sales did not go up. Web searches for the book went up, that's all.
Amazon's savvy PR department -- and gullible news reporters who take
anything a press release feeds them -- wants you to believe that Jeff
Bezos' cleverly-disguised ''stats'' mean something. They don't. It's
the Great White Lie of the publishing busienss.
Ask any honest publisher or book editor in New York or London.
Amazon's book stats are not worth a hill of beans. They do not
represent books sold or books pre-ordered. They merely reflect
internet sufers' interests and curiosity.
In the case of the peodofile guide, some ill-informed news reports
were saying that "less than 24 hours before the book was taken down by
Amazon, the virtually unknown digital book ranked well north of
157,000" on the online book ordering site. Suddenly,
the news reports erroneously "reported", the guide was up in the top100. Not.
Top 100 of what? Top 100 of nothing. Top 100 of book stats that are
''gamed'' by clever statisticians. Meaningless drivel.
Did the controversy actually spur sales of the guide, which was being
sold sold only on the Kindle platform? No.
There is no evidence or proof of that at all. Internet interest in the
book and its cover art went up, curiosity, that's all. Who's going to
actually buy a book like that? Sales never went past a few dozen. The
author himself admits that.
But even a media savvy editor of a news site, David Conroy, who
follows the e-book
industry, recently got taken in by the Amazon stats game, telling CNBC
reporter Bertha Coombs: "That's the disturbing part about [the
peodefile guide media controvesy],
that it led to actual sales."
The controversy over the book did not lead to any actual sales. Amazon
stats are not what you think they are, David. You've been fooled, too.
Many authors are confused about just what Amazon's famous "stats" really mean?
A midlist novelist in New York, who said he prefers to keep his name
out of this brouhaha but who is nevertheless willing to dish, tells
me: "Like most people, I always believed the Amazon book
rankings
were based on purchases,
not searches. I have no way of knowing one way
or the other. I don't think Amazon ever publicly posted its
methodology, and I only
get an occasional royalty statement that doesn't reflect the daily gyrations
of the statistics. However, I have noticed that when a friend or
relative buys just
a few copies of one of my books, the ranking jumps enormously. Most authors
could be a gigantic tie for last place."
On the other hand, a top executive at a gadgethead website tells
me: "I don't see a shred of evidence in the peodofile guide book
case that it was just clicks that moved the book, not sales. You know
why I think it was really a reflection of actual sales? Because the
book cost something like $4. So people were probably buying the thing.
When you have a few hundred thousand curious people looking at the
book, it's not hard to believe that a couple of hundred would buy it,
at that price."
Repeated inquires by this lone wolf reporter to Amazon's press offices
in both the UK and the US met with stubborn
non-replies. The mail apparently never got through. I tried. Nobody
will talk to me.
Jeff Bezos, talk to me!
The book is still being sold here!
btw, Nick and Hertog, notice that the Amazin stats
is called "Amazon Bestsellers Rank"....
which is really just a ranking and since it ranks all books on amazon, not just bestsellers, the term Bestsellers in the three words is mere HYPE and a LIE, since the algores ranks all books , not just the best sellers, so the entire thing is a fraud...the NYTimes need to pick up where Nick left off...this story has ..LEGS
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,120,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
: #2,120,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2,120,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Tuesday 04 Jan 2011
Ah yes, the Amazon Sales Rank: that addictive bit of eye candy that can lift an author's spirits into the stratosphere one day and hurl him down onto the rocks the next. In all likelihood neither reaction is truly justified, because a book's Amazon Sales Rank is a temporary, relative thing, and does not mean what many authors think it does. If you want to get to the bottom of what your book's ASR means, you might start by thinking about what the ASR does not mean.
alanbaxteronline.com
January 3, 2011
By alan
My new publishing series continues today with a post from April Hamilton called “How Meaningful A Metric Is Your Book’s Amazon Sales Rank?”, which is, obviously, all about the sales rank on Amazon. It makes for some pretty interesting reading. Check the links is April’s bio at the end, as there’s some good stuff in there. All yours, April:
How Meaningful A Metric Is Your Book’s Amazon Sales Rank?
Ah yes, the Amazon Sales Rank: that addictive bit of eye candy that can lift an author’s spirits into the stratosphere one day and hurl him down onto the rocks the next. In all likelihood neither reaction is truly justified, because a book’s Amazon Sales Rank is a temporary, relative thing, and does not mean what many authors think it does. If you want to get to the bottom of what your book’s ASR means, you might start by thinking about what the ASR does not mean.
First, it does not reflect a cumulative sales count. Let’s say Amazon has 1 million titles listed for sale on its site—it actually lists many more than that, but let’s keep the math simple. Let’s further say that Amazon opened its virtual doors exactly one year ago today, and your book is currently ranked #500,000. It would seem logical to assume the book that has sold the fewest copies over the past year would be ranked #1,000,000, the one that has sold the most copies would be ranked #1, and yours, ranked at #500,000, has sold exactly 499,000 fewer copies than #1 and 499,000 copies more than #1,000,000. But this is not true at all. Your book’s ASR is based on a much more complex algorithm that’s considered a trade secret by Amazon.
Second, your book’s ASR is not a dynamic line such as one might see on a sales chart, moving reliably upward each time a copy sells, and just as reliably downward when others’ books are selling and yours is not. ASR is recalculated hourly, and only includes titles that actually had sales activity during the hour in question, or were ranked within the top 100 in any category during that hour. This is how it’s possible for your book’s ASR to sometimes be higher than that of multi-million-selling books by authors along the lines of JK Rowling and Stephen King; if neither of them sold any copies in a given hour when you sold 2 copies of your book, your book’s rank will be higher than theirs’ for that hour. Your book is only being ranked relative to the performance of a small subset of all the books being offered for sale by Amazon.com.
Regarding that term, “sales activity,” shopping cart returns and other unusual circumstances are included under this umbrella. For example, if many copies of another book are sold and then returned in the same hour, that other book will take a Rank hit and every other book that shares a category with that book may get a Rank bump. Amazon will not reveal the specifics of precisely how it calculates rank, but I have observed this phenomenon with my own books—though not consistently.
Reconsider the above statement: Amazon will not reveal the specifics of precisely how it calculates sales rank. The formula is just as hotly debated, and about as arcane, as the answer to the question of how Google calculates its Page Ranks. However, in its Help pages Amazon openly states it does not share actual sales numbers for any product listed on its sites for “competitive reasons”. So the answer to the question, “What does my book’s Amazon Sales Rank mean?” is, strictly speaking, “No one really knows, except the keepers of Amazon’s ranking algorithm.” That doesn’t mean your book’s ASR is totally meaningless, though.
As your book’s ASR goes up, so does its visibility on the Amazon site, especially if you can crack the top 100 in any popular category. This is because Amazon provides hyperlinked top 100 lists in every major category right on its site. Your book is more likely to be noticed by folks browsing the site by category if it’s on one or more of those lists, and this tends to be come a self-feeding loop. More people see your book, which leads to more sales, which drives your ASR up, which leads to more people seeing your book, et cetera, et cetera. Also, the higher your book’s sales rank, the more likely it is to be recommended as a ‘buy this book and that book together’ candidate on other popular books’ product pages. This is the thinking behind the “Amazon Rush” book marketing tactic, in which you try to get as many people as possible to buy your book on the same day. If your rush is successful, your book gets that self-feeding ASR – visibility – sales cycle going.
Finally, note your book won’t have an ASR at all until at least one copy sells. From then on, it should continue to be ranked until it’s removed from sale by you or Amazon.
Apart from the context of a first sale, an Amazon Rush, or the top 100 best seller list in any category, you can’t really extrapolate all that much of value from your book’s Amazon Sales Rank. Feel free to go back to obsessing about your follower count on Twitter, instead.
April L. Hamilton is an author, author services provider, and the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat. Her most recent book is The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use.
Might want to do some fact checking on this article. . .
Do you people just type up whatever someone says when they call, or do you actually, oh, I don't know, act like a journalist and check your facts?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ebook claiming one can become a Kindle 'bestseller' simply by posting
fake reviews temporarily removed from bookseller's listings
http://www.booktrade.info/i.php/31222
The restored Amazon page for Thomas Hertog's book, now with reviews and rankings removed
The author of an ebook that gives details on how easily Amazon's bestseller rankings can be manipulated has accused the online retail giant of "hypocrisy" after the title was temporarily removed from the website over the new year.
In The Day the Kindle Died, Thomas Hertog claims it is possible to get your own book to the number one bestseller spot in its category on Amazon simply by posting fake reviews, voting on them favourably and downloading copies of the Kindle ebook yourself.
Hertog claimed he managed to do just this with his own 2009 personal finance book Wealth Hazards, pushing it above books by established bestselling authors including Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump, despite having actually sold a mere 32 copies to third parties.
The author said it took him "about 45 days" to get the book to the number one spot in personal finance. "Not once was a review or vote rejected by Amazon," he wrote.
Hertog concluded that Amazon's bestseller rankings are "inaccurate", "contrived" and "misleading" to customers, saying his findings meant "the Kindle experience is dead".
Hertog published his exposé The Day the Kindle Died in December, but claims the title was taken down from Amazon's websites on New Year's Eve after an article about the book appeared on technology site TechEye. Wealth Hazards was also removed from the Amazon listings on New Year's Eve. Both books are now once again for sale on the site, but with their sales rankings and reviews now removed.
Hertog said the temporary removal of the books showed "hypocritical" behaviour by the retailer, which recently cited its anti-censorship beliefs during the controversy over Phillip R Greaves's A Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, eventually removed from Amazon's site.
In a statement during the furore the retailer said: "Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."
Hertog asked: "Does Amazon have a double standard? Do they fear the truth getting out? No one knows yet as they remain silent hoping their actions won't be noticed."
Amazon.com declined to respond to requests for comment yesterday.
Hertog said the temporary removal of the books showed "hypocritical" behaviour by the retailer, which recently cited its anti-censorship beliefs during the controversy over Phillip R Greaves's A Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, eventually removed from Amazon's site.