When Beauty from Afar first came out, I was afflicted with Amazon Sales Rank Syndrome, a phrase I apparently just coined because a Google search for it finds nothing, nada. ASRS sufferers have mood swings linked to the mysterious ups and downs of how their book is doing according to Amazon, as measured by Sales Rank. Hardly anyone, including people in the publishing industry, has a clue about how Amazon calculates Sales Rank.
This morning, Beauty from Afar was at about 16,000, high enough to make it the No. 1 book in the “Plastic Surgery” category at Amazon. Yippee, huh? BFA has been as high as about 900. It also, on occasion, plummets to 400,000 or so.
Whatever. I have figured out that the sale of perhaps a half-dozen books in a day can send a book’s rank shooting up, just as a few days with no sales can send it into a seeming death spiral. Realizing that it doesn’t really mean much is the first step toward being cured of ASRS.
Which I am. Cured, that is. At least, I don’t think I check mine more than once or twice a day, anymore. 😉
