It appears erotica lost its store-wide rankings. Does anyone have thoughts on why Amazon decided to do this? I understand it happened on Amazon Germany some time ago.
It hits some heavy players for sure. It's definitely a category decision, a broad sweep, with possible surgical strikes to follow.PhoenixS said:Watching.
I had noticed last night that E.L. James' GREY (pubbed via Random House) is overall-rank stripped too. It's Book 1 from Christian's POV. Book 2, DARKER, is categorized as Romance, and is #676 overall. GREY is #7 in Erotica, but not on the BS list.
Not sure yet whether it's affecting the API and algos, or is a page code glitch. While I have some books that *should* be categorized as erotica on my watch-list, I don't have any that are catted as erotica, so don't have history to compare to.
I just checked my Author Central page for my erotica only pen name and the graph shows a rank, BUT there is a message at the top (where you can select the time frame) that says:PhoenixS said:Watching.
I had noticed last night that E.L. James' GREY (pubbed via Random House) is overall-rank stripped too. It's Book 1 from Christian's POV. Book 2, DARKER, is categorized as Romance, and is #676 overall. GREY is #7 in Erotica, but not on the BS list.
Not sure yet whether it's affecting the API and algos, or is a page code glitch. While I have some books that *should* be categorized as erotica on my watch-list, I don't have any that are catted as erotica, so don't have history to compare to.
It isn't a page glitch. My sales ranks on my erotica titles are MIA in Author Central as well. They're definitely up to something, and in the well-thought out way that Amazon does *everything* it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.PhoenixS said:Watching.
I had noticed last night that E.L. James' GREY (pubbed via Random House) is overall-rank stripped too. It's Book 1 from Christian's POV. Book 2, DARKER, is categorized as Romance, and is #676 overall. GREY is #7 in Erotica, but not on the BS list.
Not sure yet whether it's affecting the API and algos, or is a page code glitch. While I have some books that *should* be categorized as erotica on my watch-list, I don't have any that are catted as erotica, so don't have history to compare to.
It would be smart and avoid the blow-up if this was part of Amazon's plan to give erotica its own ecosystem. A proper "back room" in other words, so the category didn't mix with non-erotica in general searches.KelliWolfe said:It isn't a page glitch....it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.
Actually, I had one book jump from where it was hanging out in the 1100 range to 800-something, but I assumed it was just a normal fluctuation or my redistributed ad budget kicking in. My other ranks looked a little higher too, but that could easily be because of former book, as it's currently my funnel.KelliWolfe said:It isn't a page glitch. My sales ranks on my erotica titles are MIA in Author Central as well. They're definitely up to something, and in the well-thought out way that Amazon does *everything* it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.
EDIT: Erotica author ranks are now gone as well. Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.
yeah I would love that. As long as some erotica authors can get their stuff into non-erotica categories, their books will be easier to find, so that's where erotica-readers will go. If only some people follow the rules, they get hosed.Dpock said:It would be smart and avoid the blow-up if this was part of Amazon's plan to give erotica its own ecosystem. A proper "back room" in other words, so the category didn't mix with non-erotica in general searches.
Thanks for that link. I had no idea about that being passed. The elimination of personals on Craigslist is only the tip of the iceberg. There is no way, in my mind, that Amazon's actions are not connected to this law. Between this, the chaos on Facebooks, and the end of net neutrality, I believe we're about to see draconian changes on the internet.NoBlackHats said:https://imgur.com/gallery/LJAeNVY Timing seems suspicious.
This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.KelliWolfe said:It isn't a page glitch. My sales ranks on my erotica titles are MIA in Author Central as well. They're definitely up to something, and in the well-thought out way that Amazon does *everything* it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.
EDIT: Erotica author ranks are now gone as well. Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.
Not significant, no, but quite a few are reporting a mysterious bump in general non-erotica rankings around 1:00 pm PT yesterday.dianapersaud said:
This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.
It's also worth noting that, while my erotica sales have plummeted, the erotica sales that have appeared are weird. I'm selling a bunch of failed shorts from years ago, a bundle with an odd theme that has never sold a copy, a weird jokey thing that also never sold a copy. That's consistent with the possibility that Amazon has updated its algorithms leading to unpredictable consequences for erotica, especially stuff that's weird or difficult to categorize.Dpock said:Not significant, no, but quite a few are reporting a mysterious bump in general non-erotica rankings around 1:00 pm PT yesterday.
I'm not seeing that on my non-erotica pen names, especially not on the books with higher rankings where it would be less attributable to single purchases/borrows. It would be very obvious on my YA pen if it was happening.Dpock said:Not significant, no, but quite a few are reporting a mysterious bump in general non-erotica rankings around 1:00 pm PT yesterday.
How many erotica books are in the top 10k? Top 100k? It's not a huge percentage. The one time I was shoved into erotica, I made #1 with a rank of 100-something. (Book was definitely not erotica, but I used the keyword "sexy." Of course, it took three or four reps before I figured otu why I'd been placed in erotica).dianapersaud said:
This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.
True but we shouldn't assume the bump would be evenly spread out. Amazon probably made other changes at the same time. They might have thought "we're reducing the accidental erotica-buyer's chances to buy erotica, but in the absence of that, they will typically default to historical romance, nonfiction about feminism and YA fantasy, so we'll modify the algorithm to give those genres a boost". Or even not the algorithm, like if some people in the parenting category used to buy hucow erotica but now don't, the bump in rank should accrue to lactation books that aren't hucow erotica because that's what now fills the category they're looking through. We might not expect to see a bump across the board at all.Crystal_ said:Last time I checked the erotica top 100, it ended in the ten-thousands, so the rankings are probably spread out enough not to cause a noticeable difference to other books. If 2k of the top 100k books are erotica, that's not really going to be a significant jump. Going from rank 100k to 98k looks like a normal fluctuation.
As someone with some books languishing very low, I can report rank increases across the board with my books, with my lowest ranked book (in the 2 mil + zone) jumping more than 200K places.dianapersaud said:
This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.