Untold Truth of the Amazon KDP Best Seller

About this video

Dale Roberts argues that the Amazon Kindle Best Seller rank is largely a myth that new self-publishers misunderstand. He notes that he often calls himself a number one bestselling author, but points out that if you have sold even a single copy of a book, you are likely already an Amazon bestselling author at some point, because Amazon sales rankings update hourly and smart category positioning can place a book into multiple bestselling categories. He says the Kindle Store rank is rife with errors and is not influenced by sales alone: page flips through the KDP Select / Kindle Unlimited program also move rank, so someone borrowing a book through Kindle Unlimited and flipping pages raises both the author’s page-read credit and the book’s rank — meaning a book can become a bestseller without a single sale, and people can hire or ask others to borrow books to work the system. Because of this, he says Kindle Best Seller calculator and Kindle rank tracker software is mostly a waste of money, since you cannot tell who is actually selling copies versus who is getting checkouts. He calls on Amazon to remove Kindle Unlimited’s influence on the Best Seller ranking or give KDP Select books a separate category, and warns that the bestseller rank alone will not pay your bills.

Key takeaways

• Selling even a single copy can make you an Amazon bestselling author at some hour, since rankings update hourly
• Kindle Unlimited page flips through KDP Select affect Best Seller rank, so a book can rank as a bestseller with no sales at all
• Because rank mixes sales with borrows and page reads, Best Seller calculator and rank tracker software cannot show who is really selling
• Category positioning, marketing, and promotion can manufacture bestseller status in small categories — the label alone does not mean income
• The creator argues Amazon should remove Kindle Unlimited’s influence from the ranking or give KDP Select books a separate category

Episode details: published July 30, 2017 · 4:00 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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