[naughty kim]

This morning, my ranking on Author Central, erotica/kindle books, was 169.  Fast forward to 9PM and with my rank jumps to 66, in spite of not showing additional sales and only 35 KU borrows.  Is this legit or some glitch?  Not complaining but I just can't wrap my blonde head around this jump.  Anyway, keep writing and stay warm.

 

[Melody Simmons]

I have heard ranking is based not only on sales but also on how many times the book is viewed or clicked on...not sure if this is true.

 

[ArchangelEST]

You can sell 0 books and still raise in rankings in certain situations.

Your rank is not directly determined by how many books you sell, it's determined by comparing your book against other books. So if "on average", your competitors are suddenly selling less for some reason, that means that your book can start to rank better, even if you haven't recently sold any yourself. As long as your "average" is good enough, you can climb ranks by default.

This is also why sometimes even if you sell books, you drop in rank, because your competitors may just have had an even better day, raising their average higher.

 

[G. Henkel]

A lot of authors seem to forget that the ranking is not only dependent on their own sales but also in relationship with other's people's sales and lends. All that aside, the calculation of the rankings is also delayed, so even though you may have reported sales right now, the effect may take a good few hours to be reflected in the actual ranking.

 

[Cherise]

Borrows affect your ranking when the person adds the title to their kindle, not when they read the 10%, so the people who borrowed your book today won't show up as borrows on your sales reports until/unless they read the first 10%, but have still affected your ranking today. Hope this helps.

This. We call them ghost borrows.

 

[wtvr]

This is a rumour that's been travelling around the internet for a few days, but it seems to have absolutely no basis in fact...

It was from SheWrites and it's quite the head scratcher. I can't imagine why amazon would reward you for getting people to your page but then losing the sale.