| The simple answer is that it means different things | | | | 45,017, it might suddenly be a book worth adding to |
| to different people, but I will elaborate.If you are a | | | | their inventory.In scouting for books, I do look at the |
| customer and you are browsing the "Product Details" | | | | sales rank for higher priced books because I do not |
| of a specific book, you could interpret the sales rank | | | | want to stack a lot of firewood on my shelves, but |
| to be a measure of the popularity of that book. The | | | | it is certainly not the measure I use for most book |
| lower the sales rank number, the more popular the | | | | purchases. The scientist in me |
| book as determined by the number of recent sales | | | | wanted to know more, so I compiled the sales rank |
| of that title through the marketplace. This is true in | | | | data for thousands of the books I have sold, using |
| general, but if you really want to know about the | | | | sales rank at both at the time I purchased them and |
| popularity of a specific title, you also need to | | | | at the time I sold them respectively. Being an |
| consider the publication date and how long it has | | | | engineer, I had to collect and torture the data to see |
| been marketed on For example, a book with an sales | | | | if there was any correlation between |
| rank of 100,000 that has only been released and | | | | the sales rank and the time it takes to sell a book. |
| marketed on for a few days may be very popular in | | | | Indeed there is, at least in my experience, and doing |
| the near future and reach the top ten. That it is only | | | | a curve fit to the data yielded a correlation |
| ranked 100,000 right now is a little deceptive because | | | | coefficient of 0.93. The wellness of fit of the data is |
| the timeframe over which this rank was determined | | | | particularly apparent in a semi-logarithmic plot.So, you |
| is not really long enough to measure the true | | | | see, there is a meaning to the sales rank.For the |
| popularity.To a bookseller, the sales rank is quite | | | | book buyer it is a measure of a book's popularity.For |
| often correlated to how quickly a particular title might | | | | the bookseller, it is a measure of how quickly a book |
| sell. A book with a very low number sales rank might | | | | might sell and or whether or not the book might just |
| be expected to sell within minutes or hours of listing, | | | | be firewood.For the engineer, it is just a bunch more |
| and a book with a sales rank of 4,000,000 might | | | | data that can be tortured into a confession of |
| take several years to sell. The analogy is frequently | | | | sorts.For more information about the sales rank, |
| used by booksellers when they are scouting for | | | | please visit: E. Mould is the author of "Online |
| books to add to their inventory. If a bookseller finds | | | | Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed |
| a book that has an online value of $10, an sales rank | | | | Explanations and Insightful Tips," (ISBN 1599714876) |
| of 2,105,878, and he/she is faced with buying it for | | | | published February 2006. |
| $4, they are apt to pass, but if the sales rank were | | | | |