The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today on people paying over $10,000 just to get their book to the top number slot for an online bookseller–for a day or less.
First question that comes to mind–Are these people insane? Second thought? How pathetic.
Here’s a blurb…
This all adds up to numbers that are ubiquitous, closely watched — and of dubious value. The targeted marketing campaigns contribute volatility to sales-ranking numbers that are inherently unstable. Outside the top 1% or so of books, few sell multiple copies a day, so little separates books with rankings tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, apart. Morris Rosenthal, an author and publisher based in Springfield, Mass., who has studied the Amazon charts, says a day without a sale can send a book ranked 10,000 to as low as 50,000.
So, two lessons here–1.) when someone says they’re a “best-seller” ask where and by whose count before touting their greatness and 2.) authors, seriously, these numbers just don’t matter.
