Conspiracy theory thread - Do sales fall off a cliff the first of EVERY month?

[JRTomlin]

That something is not right with the sales counter. Novelrank also get bogus data from Amazon. i.e.: it's stating I had only one sales in January, while I had more. So if Amazon's system is giving reliable data like this one, I'm curious what sort of sales data we get in the reality. But I also have other problems with KDP in the recent days, such as switched credits, vanishing credit from my paperback, and I also can't raise my price on my very own book, because KDP is keeping my price on the previous one with some sort of 44% discount.

NovelRank does not get sales data. It just gets the rank and extrapolates what the sales would be, often quite inaccurately. Your other concerns don't seem to have anything to do with KDP which doesn't do paperbacks (Do you use Createspace?) and doesn't do the discounts (probably Amazon price matching from another retailer).

[Guardian]

NovelRank does not get sales data. It just gets the rank and extrapolates what the sales would be, often quite inaccurately. Your other concerns don't seem to have anything to do with KDP which doesn't do paperbacks (Do you use Createspace?) and doesn't do the discounts (probably Amazon price matching from another retailer).

First, everything was good when the Createspace paperback was released. Then I've asked a tiny change from KDP, to change the title "collaborator" to "author" for my Co-Writer. The change has happened, but then after that the "Created" status has vanished from my name and by some unknown reason the two names were switched. And I never asked for this.

Also, as I wrote on the previous page, my concern is rather this (Both KDP Kindle);
Today's rank, Book #1: #400,039 (Last sale; Week ending 01/21/2012) - January 20, Rank #44108
Today's rank, Book #2: #409,064 (Last sale; Week ending 01/28/2012) - January 27, Rank #142309 (Book#1 Rank #321049)

Now, I'm curious how the hell is it possible that Book #1 has a better ranking today while officially there wasn't a single sale from Book #1 since January 21 and not a single one from Book #2 since January 27??? One week has spent between the last sales of Book #1 and Book #2, yet Book #1 has the better rank today. Question; how is this possible? And before you would say, maybe one of the books was released sooner and the other one much later, or one of them had much-much better sales previously... there was only two weeks of difference between the release and the sale difference is minimal between the two books. This is clearly a counter problem.

[Skate]

Three of my books were free on Feb 1st and because of the reporting glitch, no 'sales' were reported that day (I'm still waiting and still waiting for an answer to my email to Amazon). BUT my one book that isn't in KDP select and has hardly been selling at all, got four sales that day. So there was definitely no drop off there for me.

Guardian, that ranking on the second book would imply a sale, but I wouldn't hold my breath if you're thinking of asking KDP about it. I did that once and got a generic reply about how rankings work. They seem to be trained to see key words in emails rather than actually reading them to find out what the problem is.

[Guardian]

Guardian, that ranking on the second book would imply a sale, but I wouldn't hold my breath if you're thinking of asking KDP about it. I did that once and got a generic reply about how rankings work. They seem to be trained to see key words in emails rather than actually reading them to find out what the problem is.

Once one of the kind customer support ladies has told me how the ranking system is working. That's the reason I say; my present bestseller rank counter is showing ultimate bogus data as based on the present information, every past sales, it's not possible that Book #1 has better ranking than #2 when that one had the very last sale 7 days prior the last sale of Book #2 (And the overall all time sale difference between Book #1 and #2 is only 5 books. That's an insignificant difference.). By the way I've sent a letter to KDP and asked them about this two days ago, but I haven't got any response since that time.

[JRTomlin]

I assume, but am not sure, that the ranking you reference are on Amazon since there are no ranking reports on KDP. Or are you going back to NovelRank? I frankly can't tell. I still can't figure out how you could request a change on a Createspace paperback from KDP. As far as I am aware, other than both being owned by Amazon, they are unrelated and one does not change the other.

There have been problems since the first of the month with ranking and sales reporting. You might have some; it's certainly possible. My own reaction other than whining a bit here is just to wait for Amazon to clear it up. They've been tweaking the site. I know someone who used to be in Amazon server support and I am reasonably sure they've been in working on it. Other people prefer to contact them and that's perfectly valid but I wouldn't hyperventilate over it if I were you.

[Guardian]

I assume, but am not sure, that the ranking you reference are on Amazon since there are no ranking reports on KDP. Or are you going back to NovelRank? I frankly can't tell. I still can't figure out how you could request a change on a Createspace paperback from KDP. As far as I am aware, other than both being owned by Amazon, they are unrelated and one does not change the other.

The easiest to ask a change is... in the product details you click on; "Would you like to update product info.". There you may ask changes for the Createspace stuffs (Especially for the credits as I did.). However you may change Author and Product description via Author Central as well (But there you can't change the credits.). Each of the modifications is taking time, around 3-5 days. So, you can change CS via KDP Author Central, via Amazon's product panel or if you write a letter to KDP support.

There have been problems since the first of the month with ranking and sales reporting. You might have some; it's certainly possible. My own reaction other than whining a bit here is just to wait for Amazon to clear it up. They've been tweaking the site. I know someone who used to be in Amazon server support and I am reasonably sure they've been in working on it. Other people prefer to contact them and that's perfectly valid but I wouldn't hyperventilate over it if I were you.

I contacted them multiple times just in this matter. Sometimes they "forget" to respond and in that case I send them another letter. Now as I haven't got any response in the last days, I'm going to send them another letter again tomorrow (However they were capable to respond to my Credits request few hours after I've sent that letter. And this was few hours after I've sent them the request to check my counters. So Amazon love to ignore people sometimes. But as I'm a pesky and cheeky guy, they won't shake me down.). And also if there is a problem since the first month with ranking and sales reporting, yet they're still using that system, it's called fraud.

I wouldn't hyperventilate over it if I were you.

I'm not hyperventilate over it, but if I put my work into their hands and if I loose $3-$6+ per vanqished sales, because their system is not working properly, I'm not accepting excuses. It's their system, so it's their responsibility.

[D a l y a]

Fact: Amazon, like Fringe, has more than one universe.  I've looked at sales rank on my computer and sales rank on my husband's computer and gotten different numbers all the time.  Okay, maybe it's not a parallel "universe" but they do have a lot of computers and different data sets.

Maybe I've got "rejected author syndrome", but I'm pretty trusting they're working out the numbers accurately.  They probably do have to shift things on occasion to stay ahead of the spampirate people.  It's not us nice little indie authors they're seeking to thwart by keeping their algorithms private, but the people who are trying to game the system.  I would imagine it's a bit like people who run ISPs ... or casinos.  They have to do lots of things for security and for all of our shared mutual benefit, but sometimes those things feel cruel when they seem to block us from our goals.

Well, back to writing.

P.S. My book POKE is free to download today and tomorrow.  I thought I'd be giddy on a wave of downloads, but I've had only 173 so far.  SAD FACE!  Please grab a copy if your Kindle isn't full.  A few people have said it's funny. :-)

[Kathleen Valentine]

I'm SOOO glad I read this! I usually have a slow start to the month, too, but January started out with such a bang (1,000 sales in 3 days) that I forgot and have been tormenting myself about this month's slower sales. Thanks for the reminder...

[JRTomlin]

The easiest to ask a change is... in the product details you click on; "Would you like to update product info.". There you may ask changes for the Createspace stuffs (Especially for the credits as I did.). However you may change Author and Product description via Author Central as well (But there you can't change the credits.). Each of the modifications is taking time, around 3-5 days. So, you can change CS via KDP Author Central, via Amazon's product panel or if you write a letter to KDP support.
I contacted them multiple times just in this matter. Sometimes they "forget" to respond and in that case I send them another letter. Now as I haven't got any response in the last days, I'm going to send them another letter again tomorrow (However they were capable to respond to my Credits request few hours after I've sent that letter. And this was few hours after I've sent them the request to check my counters. So Amazon love to ignore people sometimes. But as I'm a pesky and cheeky guy, they won't shake me down.). And also if there is a problem since the first month with ranking and sales reporting, yet they're still using that system, it's called fraud.
I'm not hyperventilate over it, but if I put my work into their hands and if I loose $3-$6+ per vanqished sales, because their system is not working properly, I'm not accepting excuses. It's their system, so it's their responsibility.

We're writers and being precise with our language is a virtue. You can't change the author or creator of a CreateSpace novel in KDP.

I tend to assume when things are hectic as they obviously are with Amazon getting a handle on something that obviously went kablooey that multiple emails just slow things down, but I realize not everyone works on that theory. I believe that Amazon is not going to lose my sales. If I thought that, I'd stop doing business with them.

[Guardian]

We're writers and being precise with our language is a virtue. You can't change the author or creator of a CreateSpace novel in KDP.

I never said that you change it directly there. "You can change CS via KDP Author Central, via Amazon's product panel or if you write a letter to KDP support."
Author Central is that authorcentral.amazon.com thingy and it reads every description what your book get from Createspace and you can change it those things there as well. You also can change it via Amazon's product panel, "Would you like to update product info.". Or as a KDP member you can write to KDP, then they might forward it to the appropriate person.

I tend to assume when things are hectic as they obviously are with Amazon getting a handle on something that obviously went kablooey that multiple emails just slow things down, but I realize not everyone works on that theory. I believe that Amazon is not going to lose my sales. If I thought that, I'd stop doing business with them.

I'm not a naive person and I rather double check everything instead of believing everything blindly. When something doesn't add-up, I used to ask questions. And when I don't get answers for those questions, I used to look around and do my own investigation. But as I said my counter problem has a long history as the first signs were in December and not now. But the present strange bestseller rank of Book #1 and Book #2 just proves that I was right since the beginning. And if I'm right, I'll do everything to make them to repair that thingy.

[IsabellaL]

Yes, it does seem to follow a pattern. My sales don't really pick up again until about the 10th of the month.

[William Peter Grasso]

I can't help but wonder how many of the conspiracies we fear are just Amazon's programmers stumbling through the side effects of a program revision (I spent a few years as a consultant in industrial program development. There were many frantic phone calls in the middle of the night when these side effects reared their ugly heads).

That said, let me get back on topic. Yeah...my sales for the first few days of the month are usually diminished (January 1, 2012 was a notable exception, and probably was for many of us.)

WPG

[D a l y a]

I'm happy to say that as of today (Feb 5th), I have seen a few sales rolling in.  There was such a colossal drop-off at the beginning of the month, but as of now, I feel more appreciative of anything selling at all.

There is so much we have no control over.  I have to take myself by the hand and direct my energy to the next book.  That's all we can control, and even that is ... up to the muses sometimes, it seems.

Perhaps the beginning-of-month dropoff is a conspiracy to get all of us invigorated about our WIPs.